My partner and I are both using RHL 9 but got there in a slightly different manner.

My partner's machine's fstab contains a zip drive entry for /dev/hdd4. I cannot mount a zip disk. I replaced the entry with /dev/sda4, and when I use the RH menu System Tools->Disk Management, I see a small window with fstab entries, but none for the zip drive. If I then restore the entry to /dev/hdd4, then the window will show the entry with /dev/hdd4. Strange.

On my machine /dev/sda4 works just fine. His machine has a built in zip drive (Dell machine), and mine uses a USB zip drive.

Any clue as to why this won't work?

It's probably a matter of having (or not having, in your case) the proper driver loaded.

For the external zip drive, the module of choice is imm (with external drive linked to /dev/sda4). For the internal drive, I don't know.

You could try hwinfo --zip to see what turns up. Hwinfo should tell you what driver(s) need to be loaded. Modinfo each driver, if there are more than one, to work out the order in which to load them. Modinfo will tell you of any module depencencies that need to be loaded before the final one that will make the zip drive work.

If you get the thing working, and the zip drive doesn't respond on reboot, create a file: /etc/modprobe.conf.local: and add the modprobe commands, in proper order, to that file. They wil then load on boot.

I assume your partner has an IDE/ATAPI drive which uses a different module then the USB drive. I always thought that the imm module was for parallel port drives.
Try loading the ide-scsi module i.e.
modprobe ide-scsi (must be root)

Look at the output of the dmesg command to see if the zip drive is being recognized. The drive should be recognized as /dev/sda if this is SCSI like drive on the system (SATA, USB and Firewire all use SCSI system and will have a sdx device ID)

I've seen one (1) post somewhere else (don't remember where) that clearly demonstrated that external zip drives (/dev/sda4) and internal drives (/dev/hdX) use different drivers. I am not able to re-locate that article/post/thread at present.

RHL 9 doesn't have a hwinfo.

I was able to load ide-sci. I then used
mount -t vfat /dev/sda4 /mnt/zip and after a bit I could hear either the zip driving working (the light was on) or the HD. I let that go on for about 7-8 minutes without seeing any results. A ctrl-C wouldn't stop it, so I tried killing it (or usermount task*s*) and that didn't do anything, so I powered down and back up (successfully). At least it lit the zip drive's LED.

dmesg didn't reveal any use of zip there.

modprobe couldn't find an imm module.

I'm not that kernel savvy to know where to use modinfo. Looks like it needs a module name from somewhere. modinfo -n ???. Just entering imm for ??? didn't work, and using * as a wildcard got info on current directory files.

I would try adding the ide-scsi module per the following:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/hcl/sh...576&cat=myprod

A bit off topic, but is it possible to print a single reply? I don't see a Print button other than provided by the browser.

I looked at the url that talks to hdd=ide-scsi. He mentions how to do it for lilo, but then says for grub, "You should be done now." What does he mean? Should I add append hdd=ide-scsi after the other boot statements? Is there really an append?

For grub add the ide-scsi like the following example but change hdd to match the location of the zip drive.
hda - 1st IDE controller master
hdb - 1st IDE controller slave
hdc - 2nd IDE controller master
hdd - 2nd IDE controller slave

Well, I appended hdd=ide-scsi to the end of the line as above, and changed the fstab entry to /dev/hdd4 ... When I booted, and looked as fstab tne entry had been changed to /dev/sda4. I then tried to mount the zip disk with

mount -t vfat /dev/sda4 /mnt/zip

and got a continuous whirring sound from the zip drive while the green LED was continually on. I was able to reboot from another window, and I eventually could see lots of messages pouring across the screen about ide-scsi. Finally, I was able to reboot, and just stopped the session to take a break. Maybe I need "hdd4=ide-scsi"?

Hmm... the correct syntax is hdd=ide-scsi. Not sure what the problem might be.
Look at the output of the dmesg command and look for error messages pertaining to the drive.

Here is the most recent output from dmesg:
Linux version 2.4.29-rtl-3.1 (root@localhost.localdomain) (gcc version 2.96 20000731 (Red Hat Linux 7.3 2.96-118)) #1 Fri May 5 14:38:51 PDT 2006
BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009f800 (usable)
BIOS-e820: 000000000009f800 - 00000000000a0000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 00000000000e6c00 - 0000000000100000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 00000000040fd800 (usable)
BIOS-e820: 00000000040fd800 - 00000000040ff800 (ACPI data)
BIOS-e820: 00000000040ff800 - 00000000040ffc00 (ACPI NVS)
BIOS-e820: 00000000040ffc00 - 0000000018000000 (usable)
BIOS-e820: 00000000fffe6c00 - 0000000100000000 (reserved)
384MB LOWMEM available.
On node 0 totalpages: 98304
zone(0): 4096 pages.
zone(1): 94208 pages.
zone(2): 0 pages.
Kernel command line: ro root=LABEL=/ hdd=ide-scsi
ide_setup: hdd=ide-scsi
Initializing CPU#0
Detected 446.558 MHz processor.
Console: colour VGA+ 80x25
Calibrating delay loop... 891.28 BogoMIPS
Memory: 386336k/393216k available (1313k kernel code, 6480k reserved, 325k data, 280k init, 0k highmem)
Dentry cache hash table entries: 65536 (order: 7, 524288 bytes)
Inode cache hash table entries: 32768 (order: 6, 262144 bytes)
Mount cache hash table entries: 512 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)
Buffer cache hash table entries: 32768 (order: 5, 131072 bytes)
Page-cache hash table entries: 131072 (order: 7, 524288 bytes)
CPU: L1 I cache: 16K, L1 D cache: 16K
CPU: L2 cache: 512K
CPU: After generic, caps: 0383f9ff 00000000 00000000 00000000
CPU: Common caps: 0383f9ff 00000000 00000000 00000000
CPU: Intel Pentium III (Katmai) stepping 03
Enabling fast FPU save and restore... done.
Enabling unmasked SIMD FPU exception support... done.
Checking 'hlt' instruction... OK.
POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX
PCI: PCI BIOS revision 2.10 entry at 0xfd993, last bus=1
PCI: Using configuration type 1
PCI: Probing PCI hardware
PCI: Probing PCI hardware (bus 00)
PCI: Using IRQ router PIIX/ICH [8086/7110] at 00:07.0
Limiting direct PCI/PCI transfers.
Linux NET4.0 for Linux 2.4
Based upon Swansea University Computer Society NET3.039
Initializing RT netlink socket
Starting kswapd
VFS: Disk quotas vdquot_6.5.1
Journalled Block Device driver loaded
parport0: PC-style at 0x378 [PCSPP,TRISTATE,EPP]
pty: 512 Unix98 ptys configured
Serial driver version 5.05c (2001-07-08) with MANY_PORTS SHARE_IRQ SERIAL_PCI enabled
ttyS00 at 0x03f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
Real Time Clock Driver v1.10f
Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M
FDC 0 is a post-1991 82077
RAMDISK driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 32768K size 1024 blocksize
loop: loaded (max 8 devices)
Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 7.00beta4-2.4
ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
PIIX4: IDE controller at PCI slot 00:07.1
PIIX4: chipset revision 1
PIIX4: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
ide0: BM-DMA at 0x10e0-0x10e7, BIOS settings: hdaMA, hdbio
ide1: BM-DMA at 0x10e8-0x10ef, BIOS settings: hdcMA, hddio
hda: WDC WD200BB-53AUA1, ATA DISK drive
blk: queue c030d3e0, I/O limit 4095Mb (mask 0xffffffff)
hdc: FX4821T, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
hdd: IOMEGA ZIP 100 ATAPI, ATAPI FLOPPY drive
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15
hda: attached ide-disk driver.
hda: host protected area => 1
hda: 39102336 sectors (20020 MB) w/2048KiB Cache, CHS=2434/255/63, UDMA(33)
Partition check:
hda: hda1 hda2 hda3
hdd:end_request: I/O error, dev 16:40 (hdd), sector 0
end_request: I/O error, dev 16:40 (hdd), sector 2
end_request: I/O error, dev 16:40 (hdd), sector 4
end_request: I/O error, dev 16:40 (hdd), sector 6
end_request: I/O error, dev 16:40 (hdd), sector 0
end_request: I/O error, dev 16:40 (hdd), sector 2
end_request: I/O error, dev 16:40 (hdd), sector 4
end_request: I/O error, dev 16:40 (hdd), sector 6
unable to read partition table
SCSI subsystem driver Revision: 1.00
kmod: failed to exec /sbin/modprobe -s -k scsi_hostadapter, errno = 2
Initializing Cryptographic API
NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET4.0
IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP, IGMP
IP: routing cache hash table of 4096 buckets, 32Kbytes
TCP: Hash tables configured (established 32768 bind 65536)
Linux IP multicast router 0.06 plus PIM-SM
NET4: Unix domain sockets 1.0/SMP for Linux NET4.0.
RAMDISK: Compressed image found at block 0
Freeing initrd memory: 83k freed
VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem).
EXT3-fs: INFO: recovery required on readonly filesystem.
EXT3-fs: write access will be enabled during recovery.
kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds
EXT3-fs: recovery complete.
EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
Freeing unused kernel memory: 280k freed
usb.c: registered new driver usbdevfs
usb.c: registered new driver hub
EXT3 FS 2.4-0.9.19, 19 August 2002 on ide0(3,2), internal journal
Adding Swap: 779144k swap-space (priority -1)
kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds
EXT3 FS 2.4-0.9.19, 19 August 2002 on ide0(3,1), internal journal
EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
hdc: attached ide-cdrom driver.
hdc: ATAPI 48X CD-ROM drive, 128kB Cache, UDMA(33)
Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.12
hdd: attached ide-scsi driver.
scsi0 : SCSI host adapter emulation for IDE ATAPI devices
Vendor: IOMEGA Model: ZIP 100 Rev: 03.H
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 00
Attached scsi removable disk sda at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
sda: Unit Not Ready, sense:
Current 00:00: sns = 70 2
ASC=3a ASCQ= 0
Raw sense data:0x70 0x00 0x02 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x12 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x3a 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0xff 0xfe 0x01 0x04 0xd7 0x00 0x40 0x00
sda : READ CAPACITY failed.
sda : status = 0, message = 00, host = 0, driver = 28
Current sd00:00: sns = 70 2
ASC=3a ASCQ= 0
Raw sense data:0x70 0x00 0x02 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x12 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x3a 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0xff 0xfe 0x01 0x04 0xd7 0x00 0x40 0x00
sda : block size assumed to be 512 bytes, disk size 1GB.
sda: I/O error: dev 08:00, sector 0
I/O error: dev 08:00, sector 0
unable to read partition table
ip_tables: (C) 2000-2002 Netfilter core team
sda: Unit Not Ready, sense:
Current 00:00: sns = 70 2
ASC=3a ASCQ= 0
Raw sense data:0x70 0x00 0x02 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x12 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x3a 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0xff 0xfe 0x01 0x04 0xd7 0x00 0x40 0x00
sda : READ CAPACITY failed.
sda : status = 0, message = 00, host = 0, driver = 28
Current sd00:00: sns = 70 2
ASC=3a ASCQ= 0
Raw sense data:0x70 0x00 0x02 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x12 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x3a 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0xff 0xfe 0x01 0x04 0xd7 0x00 0x40 0x00
sda : block size assumed to be 512 bytes, disk size 1GB.
sda: Write Protect is off
sda: I/O error: dev 08:00, sector 0
I/O error: dev 08:00, sector 0
unable to read partition table
cdrom: This disc doesn't have any tracks I recognize!