I have an Emperor Linux Raven Tablet running Ubuntu Hardy (v8.04 LTS).
The hardware is a Lenovo Thinkpad X61 Tablet. The DVD/CD is a module for the Ultra-Bay docking station. I also have an HDD module as a second disk drive.

Can anyone tell me how to accomplish the following:

1. Cold boot the laptop and use it with the DVD/CD drive.
2. "Stop" the DVD/CD device and remove the drive module.
3. Insert the HDD module
4. The workstation notices the new hardware, configures and mounts
the file systems found.

At this point I can use the HDD however I want. I use it for backup.

5. "Stop" the HDD device and remove the drive module.
6. Insert the DVD/CD module
7. The workstation notices the new hardware.
8. Since the hardware is a DVD/CD, configure and mount waits for
the loading of DVD or CD media.

Window(tm) XP-Pro (tm) Tablet PC Edition has a system tray icon that does this all day long. I cannot get Ubuntu Linux to do this.
I would appreciate real help from anyone who is willing.

MY ANALYSIS
A USB drive or thumb-drive has a device and an unmount will let you
remove and disconnect the hardware. Since we rely on hal and udev and acpi (and who knows what else) to config our hardware dynamically, DVD/CD devices are not really present until you load media. Therefore there is nothing to unmount/disconnect in the ultra-bay DVD/CD module configuration.

If I shutdown, swap ultra-bay modules, and reboot. The hardware works
and all is well. If I unmount the ultra-bay HDD and swap to the
DVD/CD module, things never respond to the hardware change.

There are buttons that will dismount the entire ultra-bay. Again,
win-dose will do this just fine. Not so for linux. NOTE -- Lenovo
says that hot-swap-undock is okay, but avoid hot-swap-dock.

Thanks in advance,
~~~ 0;-Dan

Hi,

take alook at Thinkwiki there are scripts available for swapping ultrabay devices.

Thanks for the pointer. Sadly, no joy here. The scripts are so specific to the systems in use that this person cannot map the postings onto the workstation in front of me. I suspect there is some detail or concept that I'm missing for all to make sense.

Perhaps there is another way?

1. How do I configure so that the ultra-bay HDD and DVD are "always
visible" even though only one is active at the time? How do I avoid
getting a new and unique device name with each device activation
so that the end-user has clues what to manipulate without arcane
geekish incantations every time?

2. How do I enable "use HDD" vs. "use DVD" at any given point?

3. Once enabled, how do I "mount media" (DVD) or "mount filesystem" (HDD)? I understand the mount command and /etc/fstab, but suspect
there will be more because of the situation?

Hi,

if i understand your question, you will have a non existing device shown visible in your system?
This will not work. Ultra-Bay devices are IDE devices, so they have to be initialized at system boot or on a rescan of IDE bus.

The provided scripts on Thinkwiki are not really specific for one thinkpad model, they should work on every thinkpad. i used them on A21P/A30P/T23/T42 and they worked.