zip 100 MB parallel port drive on Mandriva 2007 Spring One

jscottdl · 05-22-2007, 12:35 AM

I found this tutorial on the Iomega site here.

where I did everything it said, but when I mount the drive like this:
mount -t vfat /dev/sda4 /mnt/zip100.0

I get this error:

mount: special device /dev/sda4 does not exist

I also went here, where the tutorial is based on the other one, but it tells you to add lines to /etc/modules (I did):
linspire.com thread

How can I get my zip drive to work?

vtel57 · 05-22-2007, 12:59 AM

There are two ways, js...

1) Boot Mandriva with a Zip disk in the drive. It will automatically create the device node (/dev/sda4) necessary to mount.

or

2) Create a BASH script that will create the node for you at each boot up. You'll need some info first, though. You'll need to know where to place boot-up scripts in Mandriva (I don't know). It'll either be rcS.d or rc.local or something like that. Others here may be able to tell you. You'll also need to know the major and minor device identifiers for the Zip device. It's the master on the Sata0 buss, so the major number is probably 3. The minor would be 64.

Here's what your script needs to look like:

Code:

#!/bin/bash
mknod /dev/sda4 b 3 64
#End script

Name it something like S95zipnode and save it to your rcS.d or rc.local. I'm not in Mandriva right now. I'm in Debian. Maybe someone will come along and show you what the proper startup file is in Mandriva. Anyway, once you save it, you have to make it executible:

Code:

# chmod a+x S95zipnode

All done! Reboot. The sda4 node should be created in /dev. Your Zip should now be able to mount via command line:

Code:

 # mount -t vfat /dev/sda4 /media/<your Zip directory>

You can also make it user mountable in the GUI by adding an fstab entry:

Code:

/dev/sda4     /media/<your Zip directory>    auto     rw,user,noauto,sync     0     0

Best of luck! I think this might work for you. This is a version of the same method I used to get my Zip to work in my distros. I'll get out of Deb now and boot to Mandriva just to confirm.

Later...

vtel57 · 05-22-2007, 01:20 AM

OK. I've confirmed that this is the method I used to get my Zip working in Mandriva. The directory that you need to place the script in is /etc/rc5.d.

Luck!

~Eric

jscottdl · 05-22-2007, 01:47 AM

Thanks.

I got a problem when I tried opening the desktop icon I made, though. It said:

Could not mount device.
The reported error was:
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sda4,
missing codepage or other error
In some cases useful info is found in syslog -
try dmesg | tail or so

dmesg | tail (just two of the lines):

FAT: invalid media value (0xb9)
VFS: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on dev hdb.

*During boot up, I see something like "Cannot readlink S95zipnode"

******************
I found another thread about this: mandrivausers.org,
where they suggested this:
add this line in /etc/modprobe.preload:
ide-scsi

add these lines in /etc/rc.d/rc.local:

modprobe scsi_mod
modprobe sd_mod
modprobe ppa

and try typing
"rmmod lp" and "rmmod ppa" followed by
"modprobe ppa" and "modprobe lp"

Still I get the same "Could not mount device" error after doing all that.

jscottdl · 05-22-2007, 04:05 AM

I noticed that before I did all that stuff, there were two blue 'zip' lines under /dev. So I undid all the changes I made to fstab, rc.local, and modprobe.preload and typed "modprobe imm" - that got the 'zip' lines back. I checked their details under Konqueror (zip = sdb, zip4 = sdb4) and redid everything in the first tutorial using /dev/sdb4.

I added this line to /etc/rc.d/rc.local:
modprobe imm

and this line to /etc/fstab:
/dev/sdb4 /mnt/zip100.0 vfat noauto,user 0 0

Now it works. I didn't use your script, but thanks - your reply helped me find the answer.

vtel57 · 05-22-2007, 12:03 PM

That's the great thing about GNU/LInux... there are usually more than just one solution to a problem. Glad you got it working!

Have FUN!