I have just installed Suse 7.3 on my desktop PC (o should I say that it installed itselft while I watched - impressive!!) and I have a problem with the internal ZIP drive that is in the PC.

In /etc/fstab I have the following entry for the zip drive:

/dev/hdd4 /media/zip auto noauto,user 0 0

And when I try to mount it, with:

mount /dev/hdd4 /media/zip

I can hear the PC access the ZIP and then it tells me that I must specify the type of file system. Since the disk was written under Windows, I have tried both -t vfat and -t msdos and I get a really long error message saying that perhaps I am using the wrong file system type, or perhaps there are too many file systems mounted (this is an approx. translation, since my Suse is in Spanish).

Any suggestion?

How about just uning and if that won't fly, are you sure that the zip disk is formatted?

How about filesystem support? My default SuSE7.3 pro installed MSDOS, FAT, and FAT32 support in the kernel. I'm hoping that yours did as well.

in the fstab, change dev/hdd4 to /dev/hdd1 then just mount /media/zip.

As the subject line says, thanks for such a quick reply...

Unfortunately none of the two suggestions have helpd:

If I just do a mount /media/zip I get the following error:

/dev/hdd4: I/O Error
mount: unable to determine the type of filesystem and none was specified..

If I change fstab to change hdd4 to hdd1, and try to mount again, I get the following error:

/dev/hdd1: I/O Error
mount: must specify the type of the filesystem

Ahh... so frustrating.

Regarding the comment about vfat and msdos being loaded, I can see the files on a diskette, but do not know how to see if have vfat or msdos loaded in the kernal...

If I use lsmod (is that how it is done?) then there is no sign of msdos or vfat...

Thanks again...

mount -t vfat /dev/hdd1 /media/zip

does what?

If the disk is a genuine, normal, Windows formatted zip, then it should definitely be hdd4. If it has been formatted with another fs, then it may be hdd1. Seems a bit strange, but that's the way Iomega wanted it.

It really seems to make no difference. Regardless of how I specify the ZIP drive in /etc/fstab, I get the same I/O Error and complaint about not being able to determine the type of filesystem and none was specified.

And it is not a problem with the disk. I have loads of 100 MB ZIP disks which I have produced under W98 and W2000 and they all give the same problem.

Could it be that I Suse has not loaded the vfat module? Does this make any sense? How can I check.

Thanks for your help and patience.

Tim

Sorry, after re-reading this I thought of something else it could be. Check your lilo.conf file. In the append section you should add 'hdd=ide-floppy'. See if that makes any difference.

Thanks for the advice, I changed the append section of lilo.conf to add what you suggested, and it nows contains the followimng:

append="enableapic vga=0x0314 hdb=ide-scsi hdd=ide-floppy"

And when I try to mount it:

mount dev/hdd4 /media/zip

The light comes on the zip drive and the error message that says that I must specify the filesystem type.

If I add the -t vfat then the error message says that it is incorrect, or that it is not possible to read the superblock, or that there are too many filesystems mounted...

(the same happens with hdd1 depending on what I have put in fstab)

I have tried several disks, so it is not a zip disk problem...

Any suggestions....

Since I still suspect that the problem might be due to a lack of vfat support, I took a look at
/lib/modules/2.4.10-4GB/kernel/fs

and sure enough... there is no entry for vfat.. There is ntfs (which I use to see my W2K partition)..

If this is the problem, why is there no vfat, and where can I get hold of the module to be able to load it up...

Thanks

Did you ever get this resolved? I am having the same problem in Red Hat 7.2?

Ummm.. could you guys run dmesg and figure out for sure what the device file for your ZIP drives is? Sure beats poking around in the dark with a stick. If you don't feel like digging through dmesg's output, just try to recall what your ZIP drive is, primary master (/dev/hda), primary slave (/dev/hdb), secondary master (/dev/hdc) or secondary slave (/dev/hdc)?

For an internal IDE ZIP drive, my guess would be /dev/hd? (probably not hda, you wouldn't have your ZIP drive as your primary master now would ya?) And another thing: I don't think the 1 at the end is necessary. You don't have partitions on a ZIP disk now do ya? I think mount /dev/hd? -t vfat /mnt/zip should be OK.

But then again... I have a parallel port version that uses ppa.o, and for some reason my device file is /dev/sdc4. No idea why... It's also weird that it's interpreted by the kernel as a SCSI device (i.e. sda).

Actually, you do have partitions on a ZIP disk - usually only the one, and it should be hdx4 of sdx4 depending on what type of drive it is. Don't ask me why, it's just the way that Iomega wanted to do things.

I think that dmesging is probably the easiest way to determine exactly where the device is, but the problems don't stop there.

Above I suggested adding hdx=ide-floppy, but I could never get this to work properly (I actually blamed the PCI-IDE card on which I had the Zip drive) - but with hindsight, perhaps this should be hdx=ide-scsi. I've got it like this under Mandy 8.2 and it works an absolute treat.

As for the latest of tim_read's Zip problems - most distro's default kernels support vfat from the start...but if you've not got anything currently mounted with vfat, you should try typing modprobe vfat.

As I said, I was having the same problem in Red Hat. I
finally fixed it by just specifying /dev/hdd in /etc/fstab
instead of /dev/hdd4 or /dev/hdd1. You would think
Red Hat would tell me that, but all I got from their
installation support was some BS that zip drives
are not covered.

I've searched these forums quite a bit, and I still haven't found the solution to this problem.

I'm a Linux 8, Suse newbie, but I cannot make it work right. I've tried all the suggestions above and it still won't mount on command.

However, I think there has to be a problem that begins earlier in my system and here it is: if I don't have a zip disk in the internal zip drive when booting, the computer will always hang when the log gets to this stage:

checking partitions....
/dev/hda etc is all fine (hard disk is fine)
/dev/hdb: lost interrupt (this is the zip drive)
lost interrupt
lost interrupt
ditto, forever.

I've checked fstab repeatedly, changed the authorization from user to users, just to be sure that wasn't the problem.

In a related vein, I thought I should check my regular 3.5" floppy (keep in mind now this is using the default icons setup on the KDE desktop, for floppy, zip and cdrom)

When I click to mount a floppy, I get the same error message as the first guy in this thread, but the diff is, the floppy does mount in spite of the error message.

I have to wonder, is fstab the only file of concern in this problem area, or where and what else should a person examine?

Better yet, anybody have an internal ide zip that you can mount and unmount at will, can you post your fstab contents on here?

Thanks