Dear all,

I have an external Iomega Zip drive (parrallel port).

I searched through the archives and found this very useful thread HERE .

If I follow the instructions exactly - ie create a directory called /mnt/zip and then run modprobe parport followed by modeprobe ppa I can mount my zip drive very happily.

I entered the following line in my rc.local file:
/sbin/modprobe ppa

I entered the following line in my /etc/fstab file:
/dev/sda4 /mnt/zip vfat noauto,owner,kudzu 0 0


Now, here's the weird bit...

When I reboot, the /mnt/zip directory dissappears and so does the entry in fstab!

What's going on?

All I want to be able to do is access my zip drive on demand. Is there a step I've missed?

Thanks in advance

Mark

Try taking out kudzu. You probably want to add sync just in case you accidently umount the device and eject with out running the sync command. Parrallel port devices are not hotplug, so they have to be on before you turn on your computer. Printers are exceptions.

That's bizarre. The man page for fstab says it is only read, so I don't know what could be altering it. I don't know about that 'kudzu' option you put in. I assume that is some Redhat thing. Could it be triggering some funny business? Likely same thing removes /mnt/zip.

You could try changing permissions e.g. 'chmod 444 /etc/fstab' to see if that either stops it getting altered or generates an error message.

As always, it's it good idea to look through the output of the 'dmesg' command to see if there are any relevant messages, and run 'lsmod' to see what modules are actually loaded.

You may have a file /etc/modules which lists modules to be auto-loaded on booting. Maybe that is a better place to load parport and ppa.

kudzu is a plug and play hardware config tool and it will modify the fstab file. Removing kudzu from fstab should prevent the entry from being deleted.

kudzu is running before the ppa modules is being loaded so your zip drive is not detected.

Thanks guys...

Removing the kudzu command did the trick!

The only (very minor) niggle is the fact that the eject command simply unmounts the drive and does not actually eject the disk. To do that I have to bend down and press the button on the drive itself - sigh - it's a hard life....

Thanks again.

Mark

change "/dev/sda4 /mnt/zip vfat noauto,owner,kudzu 0 0" to "/dev/sda4 /mnt/zip vfat noauto,user,owner,kudzu 0 0" i think will solve it. the eject command works perfect for root only. so i don't know why. but it's free to try.

Thanks Tricky - but it didn't sort out the eject thing... I still need to bend down and press the button - but I suppose the exercise has got to be good for me?

Just type "sync && umount /mnt/zip && eject /dev/sda". I suggest including sync in fstab for you zip drive because if you accidently umount and eject sometimes data is not sync instantly with removable media.

what will the fstab line looks like after add syn?
just don't know where to put it.
total newbie

In the fstab file the format is:
block-device pointing-directory filesystem options fsck dump

I get confused on the last two entries fsck and dump. It could be the other way around. Somebody please correct me if I'm wrong. For your setup, a line might be:

/dev/sda4 /mnt/zip vfat sync,noauto,user,owner,umask=000 0 0

I added umask=000 just in case you want to write to the disk while you are logged in as a normal user. umask means all files and directories have a permission of 777 when they are written to the medium. A umask of 022 will be 755 (usually distributions set to this permission for normal user files and directories).

The command eject does work but it could be you set LINUX to high security setting. The eject may not work unless you change a setting in either PAM or some other security setting. I can not help you on that.