grub floppy snafu

[Haines Brown]

My attempt to cross install sarge on a new disk has run aground
because after upgrading to sarge on my old disk I've run into
increasing floppy problems.  I'm running sarge, 2.4.18-bf2.4. 

The initial problem was trying to umount floppies. The fstab lines
are:  

        /dev/fd0  /floppy  auto noauto,rw,sync,user,exec 0 0
        automount(pid382) on /floppy type autofs 
            (rw,fd=5,pgrp=382,minprot0=2,maxproto=4)    

Do I understand correctly that automount will mount the floppy if the
floppy is accessed? If so, it does not work. Ps aux does not show any
process 382. There's no auto umount after five minutes.

I have no trouble mounting a floppy with 

        $ mount /floppy

but when I umount, root can do it, but not user:

        $ umount /floppy
        umount: it seems /floppy is mounted multiple times

This even immediately after a reboot.

To umount the floppy, either root must do it or I must run: 
        
        $ umount /dev/fd0

Then came a econd problem with floppies. When I insert a vfat
unmounted floppy and do: 

        # cd /usr/lib/grub/i386-pc
        # dd if=stage1 of=/dev/fd0 bs=512 count=1
        1+0 records in
        1+0 records out
        # dd if=stage2 of=/dev/fd0 bs=512 seek=1
        153+1 records in
        153+1 records out

The floppy becomes bootable, but is no longer mountable:

        $ mount /floppy 
        mount: I could not determine the filesystem type, and none was
                specified

        # mount /floppy
        mount: you must specify the filesystem type

        # mount -t vfat /dev/df0   /floppy
        mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/fd0, 
                or too many mounted file systems

I can boot the floppy to the grub> prompt, but being unable to mount
it, can't put on it the directories and files needed for a grub
menu. If I try the dd to copy stage1 and stage2 after constructing
putting in place the directory and files for the menu, doing so
destroys the ability to bring up the grub menu.

I also find that grub now maps my hard disks differently than before:

  sda  (fd0)
  sdb  (fd2)
  sdc  (fd1)

I've already raised this issue and created a bug report, but there's
been no action on it. I'd really like to complete the installation of
sarge, but am blocked by my inability to create boot floppies.

Haines Brown