Hi,

After yesterday's thread (internal zip drive with 2.6), I played around a
lot with different suggestions, and what came up was rather odd. Thought
I'd start this new thread to sum up information until now.

My internal Zip drive is correctly recognized at startup as hdd, but udev
only creates a device noce /dev/hdd1 when a zip disk is inserted before
startup. (You may wonder why it's not /dev/hdd4. That's because I erased
the fourth VFAT partition and put a first ext2 partition on every disk.)

Joost Kremers suggested I create the device manually with mknod, so here's
what I put in /etc/rc.d/rc.local:

mknod -m 660 b 22 65

Now here's what happens:

- Start the PC without a disk in the zip drive.

- Log in.

- Insert zip disk.

- mount /zip -> I get an error message about /dev/hdd1 not being a valid
block device... BUT:

- If I issue the command again, it works!

I tried this in several combinations, and here's the conclusion: when the PC
starts without a zip disk inserted - and the device is created manually
with mknod - MOUNT FAILS, BUT ONLY THE FIRST TIME. (Not shouting, but
marvelling...)

What's happening here?

Niki Kovacs

To cut things short: mount /zip only works on the second attempt, be it as
root or as user.

Tried to compare lsmod output before mounting and after successfully
mounting, but there's no difference.

N.

On Wed, 06 Apr 2005 11:43:14 +0000, Niki Kovacs <mickey@mouse.com> wrote:
>My internal Zip drive is correctly recognized at startup as hdd, but udev
>only creates a device noce /dev/hdd1 when a zip disk is inserted before
>startup. (You may wonder why it's not /dev/hdd4. That's because I erased
>the fourth VFAT partition and put a first ext2 partition on every disk.)
.. . .
>I tried this in several combinations, and here's the conclusion: when the PC
>starts without a zip disk inserted - and the device is created manually
>with mknod - MOUNT FAILS, BUT ONLY THE FIRST TIME. (Not shouting, but
>marvelling...)

Zip disks have always been a little strange, there's /usr/doc...ZIP-howto.
What does the matching /etc/fstab line say?
Linux never did like 'hard drives' with removeable media...
Since you re-format yours, have you tried super-floppy, no partiton
table? Make a difference? Still /dev/hdd -- may not change anything.

The machine I have with ATAPI zip is 2.4.30 kernel, noticed that ide-scsi
prevents ide-floppy being loaded. Actually fist time since install I
try zip-disk, had to re-compile kernel for ide-floppy support Oldest
directory from '/' is Jan'05

Can't help with udev, can't see the benefit, seems strange you need
to create node for standard device, udev was supossed to fix things,
not break them?

Cheers,
Grant.

On Wed, 06 Apr 2005 12:39:39 +0000, Niki Kovacs <mickey@mouse.com> wrote:

>To cut things short: mount /zip only works on the second attempt, be it as
>root or as user.
>
>Tried to compare lsmod output before mounting and after successfully
>mounting, but there's no difference.

Super-floppy option would prevent 'hard drive no media' state on startup,
long time since I went there, certainly not on 2.6 kernel.
Cheers,
Grant.

Grant Coady wrote:

> Zip disks have always been a little strange, there's /usr/doc...ZIP-howto.
> What does the matching /etc/fstab line say?
> Linux never did like 'hard drives' with removeable media...
> Since you re-format yours, have you tried super-floppy, no partiton
> table?**Make*a*difference?**Still*/dev/hdd*--*may*not*change*anything.

Hi Grant,

IT WORKS!!! (Not marvelling, but shouting this time) ). Well, superfloppy
was the answer. Dunno why, but 2.6 doesn't like partitions on zip disks
(whereas 2.4 does).

Solution:

mke2fs /dev/hdd

And then /etc/fstab:

/dev/hdd /zip ext2 noauto,user 0 0


Tried it in a few combinations, works like a charm.

Thanks!

Niki