Jump to content

zip drive IDE


rg.oliveira
 Share

Recommended Posts

IDE zip drives have been a perennial pain in the but in linux. And now that no one is installing them on new comps anymore because of more cost effective alternatives(CD-RW, usb flash drives, etc) there is probably little incentive to work on the issues.

I'm not sure how the ide version is identified in linux but the usb versions ran under scsi emulation and always took sda4 as the device file IIRC. The first thing to do is try to determine if linux can see the zip disk and how linux identifies it. Once you know the device file for the drive/zip disk, you can create an entry for it by hand in /etc/fstab. To figure that out, without any zip disk in the drive, open a console and run:

 

$ su

<enter root password>

# fdisk -l

 

That will give you a printout of all storage devices that linux recognizes, whether mounted or not. Now put a zip disk in the drive and rerun "fdisk -l". You should see a new entry which will list the device file for your zip drive. If not, linux is not recognizing the device. If it does give a new entry post the output of the above commands here and we can take it from there.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Please copypaste your /etc/fstab file here.

 

 

I´ve tried fdisk -l but it didn´t show anything about my ZiP drive (the disk was inserted).

 

Look at my dmesg:

 

hdd: IOMEGA ZIP 100 ATAPI, ATAPI FLOPPY drive

hdd: set_drive_speed_status: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }

hdd: set_drive_speed_status: error=0x04 { AbortedCommand }

 

 

My fstab:

 

/dev/hda6 / ext3 defaults 1 1

/dev/hda5 /home ext3 defaults 1 2

/dev/hdc /mnt/cdrom iso9660 user,iocharset=iso8859-1,noauto,ro,exec 0 0

none /mnt/floppy supermount dev=/dev/fd0,fs=ext2:vfat,--,umask=0,iocharset=iso8859-1,sync,codepage=850 0 0

none /proc proc defaults 0 0

/dev/hdb1 /usr/local ext3 defaults 1 2

/dev/hda1 swap swap defaults 0 0

 

the device /dev/hdd4 doens´t exists

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If fdisk is not picking it up, there's no point in trying to edit fstab right now. The device is not being detected. After a little searching around the net, it looks like ide zip drives need a special driver module loaded called "ide-floppy" before linux will detect it. So what I'd like you to try is manually loading that module then rerun the fdisk stuff both with and without a zip disk in the drive. Here's what you need to run:

 

$ su

<enter root password>

# modprobe ide-floppy

# fdisk -l

 

insert zip disk:

 

# fdisk -l

 

If you get some decent output from fdisk after loading the ide-floppy module with the modprobe command we're pretty much there. Then we will need to edit some configuration files to autoload ide-floppy on boot and create an entry in fstab for your zip drive. It sounds complicated but it's really not.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Add module ide-floppy to your /etc/modprobe.preload file. Udev will then see your zip drive in /sys/block/ and create the appropriate entries in /dev.

 

Do NOT configure your zip drive to use supermount. It doesn' t work correctly and can corrupt the file systems on your disks. You will have to manually mount/unmount you zip drive.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'loaded the ide-floppy module and inserted the disk.

 

The result of command fdisk -l /dev/hdd was:

 

Disk /dev/hdd: 100 MB, 100663296 bytes

64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 96 cylinders

Units = cilindros of 2048 * 512 = 1048576 bytes

 

Dispositivo Boot Start End Blocks Id System

/dev/hdd4 * 1 96 98288 6 FAT16

 

So, I tried to mount the device manually like this:

mount -tfat16 /dev/hdd4 /mnt/zip/

error: o tipo de sistema de arquivos fat16 não é suportado pelo kernel

mount /dev/hdd4 /mnt/zip/

error: the especial device /dev/hdd4 doesn't exists

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You can create the device using the "mknod" command but you need to know the major and minor numbers of hdd4 first. To get that run:

 

$ cat /proc/partitions

 

Do this with a zip disk in the drive by the way. You should see an entry for hdd and hdd4 since it was picked up by fdisk. the first collumn is the major number and the second collumn is the minor number and will be "4" for hdd4. Here's my output to give you an idea what I'm talking about:

 

$ cat /proc/partitions
major minor  #blocks  name

 33     0   78150744 hde
 33     1   22924723 hde1
 33     2          1 hde2
 33     5    7831656 hde5
 33     6   31455238 hde6
 33     7   15936448 hde7
 34     0   58633344 hdg
 34     2          1 hdg2
 34     5    6289416 hdg5
 34     6    6289414 hdg6
 34     7   45086391 hdg7
 34     8     955836 hdg8
  8     0  195360984 sda
  8     2          1 sda2
  8     5   47102548 sda5
  8     6   46082421 sda6
  8     7   15366141 sda7
  8     8   11799711 sda8
  8     9    8442126 sda9
  8    10   41568156 sda10
  8    11   12900163 sda11
  8    12    6048441 sda12
  8    13    6040408 sda13
  8    16  244198584 sdb
  8    18          1 sdb2
  8    21    1052226 sdb5
  8    22   73400953 sdb6
  8    23  105763896 sdb7

 

Once you determine the major and minor numbers run as root:

 

# mknod -m 777 /dev/hdd4 b <major number> <minor number>

 

For example, the minor number is 4 and the major number for hdd4 may be 32. In that event you would run:

 

# mknod -m 777 /dev/hdd4 b 32 4

 

After that try mounting hdd4 again.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

pardon, this is my output whith ide-floppy loaded:

 

major minor  #blocks  name

  3     0   19551168 hda
  3     1     522081 hda1
  3     2          1 hda2
  3     5   13823901 hda5
  3     6    5205028 hda6
  3    64   20359080 hdb
  3    65   20354323 hdb1
 22    64      98304 hdd

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Do you have a zip disk in the drive? If so. what do you get from:

 

# fdisk -l /dev/hdd

 

Is it still picking up hdd4?

 

I didn't think it was possible for fdisk to pick up hdd4 and for hdd4 to not be listed in /proc/partitions. You might try putting another zip disk in the drive and rerunning cat /proc/partitions and fdisk -l. At any rate, you can deduce the major and minor numbers for hdd4 since you are getting output for hdd. hdd4's major number would be 22 and its minor number would be 68. So you should run:

 

# mknod -m 777 /dev/hdd4 b 22 68

 

That will create /dev/hdd4. Then try and mount hdd4 per my above post.

 

Just for your info, the only thing the kernel cares about is the major and minor numbers and the type of device the thing is. "b" in the above is for "block device" as opposed to a "character device". All drives are block devices. The kernel keeps track of things and communicates with hardware through the major and minor device numbers. The /dev/hdd4 file is created by mknod and assigned the "b" and major and minor numbers. You can really call it anything and it would still work as long as you get the device type and major and minor numbers correct. They tell the kernel exactly where to look on the ide bus to communicate with the device.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Great, we are inching are way there. Being able to mount only as root is normal. You need to create an entry in /etc/fstab for hdd4 with the appropriate options before you can mount and/or write to it as an ordinary user. We also need to start making some of these changes a permanent part of your config files so you don't have to do all this modprobe and mknod every time you reboot.

 

First let's edit /etc/modprobe.preload. You need to be root to edit this file. An easy way to do that is run this in a console:

 

$ kdesu kwrite /etc/modprobe.preload

 

Enter your root password in the popup window when prompted and kwrite will come up with root privlieges displaying modprobe.preload. You need to have the ide-floppy module loaded at boot time so just add this at the end of the file:

 

ide-floppy

 

Save the file and reboot. Then check to see if ide-floppy has been automatically loaded by running as root:

 

# lsmod

 

You should see ide-floppy in the list. Also check to see if /dev/hdd4 has survived the reboot. I'm not sure it will. If it doesn't we will have to address that as well. Please post back your results. I can give you what you need for fstab but I'm a little concerned about whether these drivers and the device file are setup properly. If you have an entry in fstab for hdd4 and the device file has vanished, it could hang on reboot and leave the system unbootable.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...