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Old 05-14-2002, 08:59 PM   #1
douglassparker
LQ Newbie
 
Registered: Apr 2002
Location: Derwood, MD
Distribution: Red Hat
Posts: 6

Rep: Reputation: 0
Angry zip drive cannot determine file system in RH7.2


I purchased my computer about 3 years ago with Red Hat pre-installed. It has an iomega zip Atapi 100 mg drive. It worked fine with RH 7.1. I use Red Carpet to update my configuration. At some point the zip drive quit working. I have confirmed that there is no mechanical problem. I had the computer in for servicing and asked the technician to check the zip drive. He put in a brand new drive and still had the same problem. I recently upgraded to RH7.2, hoping that would fix the problem, but it did not. When I click on the CD ROM drive on the KDE desktop, I see the message:

/dev/hdd4: Input/output error
mount: I could not determine the filesystem type and none was specified.

The zip disks are as they come from the box, i.e., preformatted for Windows. I can read the zip disks on a Windows machine. Here is the contents of etc/filesystems:

ext3
ext2
nodev proc
nodev devpts
iso9660
vfat
hfs

Here is proc/filesystems
nodev rootfs
nodev proc
nodev sockfs
nodev tmpfs
nodev shm
nodev pipefs
ext2
iso9660
nodev devpts
ext3
nodev autofs
nodev binfmt_misc
vfat

/lib/modules/2.4.9-31/kernel/fs/vfat does exist. I don't think the floppy would work if vfat support was missing.


Here is the contents of etc/fstab:
LABEL=/ / ext3 defaults 1 1
LABEL=/boot /boot ext3 defaults 1 2
none /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
/dev/hda2 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom iso9660 noauto,user,kudzu,ro 0 0
/dev/hdd4 /mnt/zip100.0 auto noauto,user,kudzu 0 0
/dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto noauto,user,kudzu 0 0

If I try to change the mount option to vfat, I get the message:
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hdd4, or too many mounted filesystems

here is /boot/grub/device.map:
# this device map was generated by anaconda
(fd0) /dev/fd0
(hd0) /dev/hda

Here are the drive descriptions from /etc/sysconfig/hwconf

class: CDROM
bus: IDE
detached: 0
device: hdc
driver: ignore
desc: "TAEIL CDD-7400A"

-
class: FLOPPY
bus: MISC
detached: 0
device: fd0
driver: unknown
desc: "3.5" 1.44MB floppy drive"
-
class: FLOPPY
bus: IDE
detached: 0
device: hdd
driver: ignore
desc: "IOMEGA ZIP 100 ATAPI Floppy"
physical: 0/0/0
logical: 96/64/32
-
class: HD
bus: IDE
detached: 0
device: hda
driver: ignore
desc: "Maxtor 52049H3"
physical: 39704/16/63
logical: 2491/255/63

If I boot the system with a zip disk in thw drive, I get this in
/var/log/messages:

May 12 23:01:47 dhcppc2 kernel: hdd: hdd1 hdd2 hdd3 hdd4
May 12 23:01:47 dhcppc2 kernel: ide-floppy: hdd: I/O error, pc = 28, key = 5, asc = 21, ascq = 0
May 12 23:01:47 dhcppc2 kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev 16:44 (hdd), sector 2
May 12 23:01:47 dhcppc2 kernel: hdd: hdd1 hdd2 hdd3 hdd4
May 12 23:01:47 dhcppc2 kernel: ide-floppy: hdd: I/O error, pc = 28, key = 5, asc = 21, ascq = 0
May 12 23:01:47 dhcppc2 kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev 16:44 (hdd), sector 0
May 12 23:01:47 dhcppc2 kernel: FAT: unable to read boot sector

These messages repeat a few times. Any ideas?
 
Old 05-16-2002, 04:21 PM   #2
sewer_monkey
Member
 
Registered: May 2002
Location: Toronto, ON, Canada
Distribution: Ubuntu, Debian, RedHat/CentOS
Posts: 624

Rep: Reputation: 31
Your best bet is vfat (less likely msdos) as the fs. You may need to specify it explicitly to mount (note: only root can do that):

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

You may also want to stick in a "-o ro" just to be safe (read-only mount). You can skip the read-only once you mount it successfully.
 
Old 05-16-2002, 08:59 PM   #3
douglassparker
LQ Newbie
 
Registered: Apr 2002
Location: Derwood, MD
Distribution: Red Hat
Posts: 6

Original Poster
Rep: Reputation: 0
Talking

Thanks a bunch. The problem wasn't that I had to
specify vfat. The problem was that the Red Hat
configuration program had put this in /etc/fstab:

/dev/hdd4 /mnt/zip100.0 auto noauto,user,kudzu 0 0

All I had to do was change /dev/hdd4 to /dev/hdd. I
have seen some discussion that said one had to
specify eithe hdd1 or hdd4, depending on the
filesystem. When I saw your post, I tried using
/dev/hdd. Works like a charm! Thanks for your help.
Red Hat installation support just gave me some BS
that zip drives were not covered by installation support.
To get the info, you just gave me, I would have had to
pay an extra $320! Can you believe that? I think I'll
switch to Mandrake.
 
  


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