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How can I check if the floppy driver is installed on my Debian system?

I already used the following commands:

find /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/kernel/ -name '*.ko' | grep floppy
ls -l /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/kernel/drivers/

But I have not found any information about a floppy driver. Are there any better commands to check if the floppy driver is installed?

Furthermore, I have checked the /dev directory and have found the following entry:

0 lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root          12 Aug  1  2012 fd -> /proc/self/fd

Which, as far as I know, is the floppy disk device. Why is the floppy disk in the devices when there is no driver installed?

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Current Debian kernels do still provide the floppy driver, and

find /lib/modules -name floppy.ko

should show where it lives on disk.

find /lib/modules/$(uname -r) -name floppy.ko

will determine whether the currently installed version of the currently-running kernel is built with the floppy driver as a module.

To determine whether it’s installed in the running kernel, use lsmod:

lsmod | grep floppy

If that outputs nothing, the module isn’t installed.

On most current (physical) systems you won’t be able to install it anyway, because most current computers no longer have a floppy controller. The various /dev/fdX devices will only show up if the floppy module is installed successfully. /dev/fd itself isn’t related to the floppy driver, it provides access to the current process’ file descriptors.

It is possible for a kernel to have the floppy driver built-in; to check for that, look for floppy-related messages in your boot log (dmesg if your system hasn’t produced too much output since it was booted), or look for BLK_DEV_FD in your kernel’s configuration.

Note that this driver isn’t used for USB floppy drives.

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    And is find /lib/modules -name floppy.ko a surefire way of testing if your Linux system still can support a floppy? My Arch with kernel 5.2.6 returns nothing. Have I moved to this brave new era bereft of floppies? – terdon♦ Aug 12 '19 at 9:09
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    @terdon it doesn’t guarantee it, the driver could still be built-in, not built as a module. See the update for some more detail. – Stephen Kitt Aug 12 '19 at 9:19
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    And of course there's this: m.slashdot.org/story/358994, leading to Github: "This also marks the floppy driver as orphaned" – Jeff Schaller♦ Aug 12 '19 at 9:47
  • Thanks for the detailed answer. – Kevin Wallis Aug 12 '19 at 10:50
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    @JeffSchaller, I hear the news of the death of floppy were a bit premature: lwn.net/Articles/795012 – ilkkachu Aug 12 '19 at 11:01

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