First, I'd like for the various special devices for different floppy capacities (like /dev/fd0u720 etc.) to be available. I tried to adapt some udev rules I found online. I tried this, which I saved as /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-floppy.rules:

# change floppy device ownership and permissions
# default permissions are 640, which prevents group users from having write access

# first fix primary devices (/dev/fd0, /dev/fd1, etc.)
# also change group ownership from disk to floppy
SUBSYSTEM=="block", KERNEL=="fd[0-9]*", GROUP="floppy", MODE="0660"

# next recreate secondary devices (/dev/fd0u720, /dev/fd0u1440, etc.)
SUBSYSTEM=="block", KERNEL=="fd[0-9]*", ACTION=="add", RUN+="create_floppy_devices -c -t $attr{cmos} -m %M -M 0660 -G floppy $root/%k"

But to no avail. It seems the create_floppy_devices script isn't provided with 12.10. How do I obtain it?

Second: I'm using MATE, and whenever I log in I get a message box saying it tried to mount the drive but failed. How do I disable this?

Third (which is probably related to the second): Whenever there's a disk in the drive, the motor won't stop spinning. If I do a mdir of it, after it returns, the motor stops, and then starts again. I suspect there's some process in MATE doing this.

UPDATE: For CentOS 6 (who does have a create_floppy_devices program) the following rules file worked. Saved as /etc/udev/rules.d/98-floppy.rules:

# change floppy device ownership and permissions
# default permissions are 640, which prevents group users from having write access

# first fix primary devices (/dev/fd0, /dev/fd1, etc.)
# also change group ownership from disk to floppy
KERNEL=="fd[0-9]*", GROUP="floppy", MODE="0660"

# next recreate secondary devices (/dev/fd0u720, /dev/fd0u1440, etc.)
# drive A: is type 4 (1.44MB) - add other lines for other drives
KERNEL=="fd0*", ACTION=="add", RUN+="/lib/udev/create_floppy_devices -c -t 4 -m %M -M 0660 -G floppy $root/%k"