Mounting a Zip Disk

miknight · 09-08-2003, 09:45 PM

I'm using my IDE Zip Drive with Linux now, and it's going quite well save for one thing.

Normally I can mount it with a command like:

mount -t vfat /dev/hdd4 /mnt/zip

However /dev/hdd4 doesn't exist if I don't have the Zip disk in the drive when Linux starts up.

How can I get it to probe the drive to get hdd4 to come up?

Thanks for any help!

born4linux · 09-09-2003, 12:57 AM

what does your logs say when u startup linux w/o the zip disk?

have u tried checking your partition layout via fdisk -l?

miknight · 09-09-2003, 04:34 AM

Here's the relevant output of fdisk -l with the zip disk having been in the drive on boot-up.

Code:

Disk /dev/ide/host0/bus1/target1/lun0/disc: 100 MB, 100663296 bytes
64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 96 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 2048 * 512 = 1048576 bytes
 
                                Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks  Id  System
/dev/ide/host0/bus1/target1/lun0/part4   *           1          96       98288   b  W95 FAT32

I'm running Gentoo (which uses devfs) which makes things a little different. Is this what's causing the problems?

/dev/hdd is symlinked to ide/host0/bus1/target1/lun0/disc and when hdd4 is around it's symlinked to ide/host0/bus1/target1/lun0/part4.

It works fine if the disk is in during boot-up... Here's the log on boot-up when the disk is in:

Code:

hdd: attached ide-floppy driver.
hdd: 98304kB, 196608 blocks, 512 sector size
hdd: 98304kB, 32/64/96 CHS, 4096 kBps, 512 sector size, 2941 rpm
hdc: attached ide-scsi driver.
Partition check:
 /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0: p1 p2 < p5 p6 p7 >
 /dev/ide/host0/bus1/target1/lun0: p4

Here's the same portion of dmesg during boot-up without the disk in:

Code:

hdd: attached ide-floppy driver.
hdd: No disk in drive
hdd: 98304kB, 32/64/96 CHS, 4096 kBps, 512 sector size, 2941 rpm
hdc: attached ide-scsi driver.
Partition check:
 /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0: p1 p2 < p5 p6 p7 >

(That last partition check is just my main hard drive, the Zip disk's one is obviously missing).

miknight · 09-09-2003, 08:50 PM

Aha I got the answer in the Gentoo forums.

For anyone interested, running

Code:

blockdev --rereadpt /dev/hdd

worked like a charm.