Hello,

I have a USB ZIP drive. On my old Mandrake system, when it was already plugged in and I inserted a disk into it, a device file for the disk appeared alongside the device file for the drive itself. Now I use Gentoo, and this doesn't happen. I can mount the disk after manually create the device file.

What was the component that was doing that automatic device creation for me? On my new Gentoo system, which uses a 2.6.5 kernel (Mandrake used 2.4) I currently have devfs compiled into the kernel and it's mounted, and I have hotplugging going (but something tells me hotplugging doesn't handle inserting disks anyway). Does it have something to do with this switch from devfs to udev, and removing things from devfs in newer kernels?

Hotplug and udev (the new hotness) are a bit immature, and do not handle quite a few devices yet, in a way that people want. Devfs (old and busted) has other issues. I believe that there may no longer be /dev/discs properly populated with usb discs (with 2.6), however /dev/sdX should still work. scsi_info /dev/sdX will tell you what it is.

So until udev is finished, is the best way to handle it to create the device file for the disk and for any other devices I need in a script that runs at startup?

By the way, I don't have the scsi_info command. Where do I get it or what package is it in?

Yes, probably. Keep using udev and devfs, they will not hurt, but do not be surprised that they will break things at the next kernel upgrade. Gentoo and other distros already have most devices. They are just named cryptically.

strangely scsi_info is in
sys-apps/pcmcia-cs-3.2.7
do not ask me why
if you do not wish to install it, all the info should be under /proc/scsi.

Oh and hotplugging does handle discs (USB drives at least), it just does not create the devices yet, I think.