Created attachment 46455 [details]
/var/log/YaST2 directory

Dynamic /dev ?!  
 
Please attach output of hwinfo 

Created attachment 46456 [details]
hwinfo

Hmm, hwinfo finds a floppy but it does not appear in the HAL device list at 
the beginning of hwinfo output. 
 
HAL problem ? 

Possibly. Can I access the machine?

Yes, you can log on to f100.suse.de, where I already added fd0 with mknod, or
you better use merkur.suse.de, which is still untouched.

Looks like an udev issue. 

Once the device is present, hal finds the floppy entries in /sys.

Or try f174. 

I'm not familiar with udev, yet. I *think* it would be reasonable to debug this problem by enabling 
verbose logging for udev on a x86 machine with a floppy attached and track down the udev rule 
which triggeres the creation of /dev/fdX.  Once this is clear, it should be possible to solve the problem 
on x86_64.

Isn't the problem on amd64 that the floppy module is not loaded? 
Or is udev supposed to do that? 

Yes.

I suppose you haven't mknod'ed /dev/fd0 on f174 but simply loaded the floppy moule, right?

exactly 

It is an udev issue. New version submitted to autobuild.

Good.

But one last thing:

Wouldn't it be good having the floppy driver as module on both, x86 and x86_64?

We could probe it once at installation time. Only if a floppy is present we load it afterwards, too.

Since many systems are shipped without a floppy drive these days, I do not see a good reason for 
compiling this driver into the kernel.