Usb ZIP 250 plug-and-play?
 

So everything I've read says that redhat 8.0 and later is plug and play for usb mass storage devices. Well, I have an iomega zip 250 that doesn't want to be plug and play.

I found a site last week that walked me through which files to load to power it on and use it...fine. But it didn't stick, and I lost the site that told me how to do it. So now I'm stuck again. Can someone please tell me how to make my redhat 9.0 allow my zip drive to be plug-and-play...maybe even accessible through the gnome desktop right-click "disks" menu?

Thanks.
Michael

Be sure to have usb mass storgage configured in your kernel. I thnk you need scsi emulation enabled as well. Run a dmesg as root and you should get a messeage somewhere that looks like this:

Initializing USB Mass Storage driver...
usb.c: registered new driver usb-storage
scsi1 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
usb-uhci.c: interrupt, status 3, frame# 1578
Vendor: IOMEGA Model: ZIP 100 Rev: 44.W
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 02
WARNING: USB Mass Storage data integrity not assured
USB Mass Storage device found at 3
USB Mass Storage support registered.

And then a little later you'll see this:
PCI: Found IRQ 9 for device 02:0a.0
Attached scsi removable disk sda at scsi1, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
usb-uhci.c: interrupt, status 3, frame# 160

This means that my zip drive can be found at /dev/sda (if it's windows formated it will be sda4). Just add that to your fstab and you are good to go.

forgive the newbie, but that's why I'm here, right?

How do I "make sure I have usb mass storage configured in my kernel"?

BTW, I found the site again...it's at http://www.qbik.ch/usb/devices/showdev.php?id=328

It works, it's just a pain. They have me "insmod" three different modules, then mount it. If I can automate this process, it'd be great.

Thanks
Michael

oh, also when adding this to my fstab file...Hardware browser lists the file type as fat 16...what do I put for the type column...vfat?

Thanks again

good questions!

If you've gotten it to work before then I'm sure your kernel is setup and ready to go. Does redhat have a file called /etc/modules.autoload? It's been a while since I've tinkered with redhat (yahoo gentoo!). If there is, just add the name of the modules to that file. For example, here's my /etc/modules.autoload file:

# /etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.4: kernel modules to load when system boots.
# $Header: /home/cvsroot/gentoo-src/rc-scripts/etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.4,v 1.1 2003/03/09 09:06:23 azarah Exp $
#
# Note that this file is for 2.4 kernels. If you need different modules
# for a 2.5 kernel, you can create /etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.5
#
# Add the names of modules that you'd like to load when the system
# starts into this file, one per line. Comments begin with # and
# are ignored. Read man modules.autoload for additional details.

# For example:
# 3c59x
ide-scsi
sg
sr_mod
usb-storage
nvidia
printer


Granted, this is gentoo and not redhat, but you get the idea. If you don't have an autoload file, let me know and we'll work something else out.

As for fstab, yuo are absolutley right, list the file type as vfat and it will be happy.

Okay, I just dug around a little bit in redhat 8 and found a modules.conf file. Try adding

alias usb-storage

to that file and reboot. Does it load?

I hope this helps.

OK...

Based on another thread I stumbled across here, I figured out the syntax for my fstab file...I just used "auto", and used the users switch, and viola! It's in my right-click disks menu. Great. But it doesn't work...trying to mount tells me that there is probably no media in the drive. Ok, so I manually mount. When I go to unmount, it says it can't do it because /mnt/zip250 doesn't match fstab. Interesting...

Right, I don't have a modules.autoload file, but I did have my modules.conf file. I added the line you said and rebooted, but it was the same thing...I can go into root and manually insmod the three files then mount it, but it wasn't loaded itself.

Getting close...I can feel it. Is there any way to write a script maybe...have it load the three modules and mount the zip at startup? But then I'll still have the tempermental desktop menu...sigh...well, we'll get it eventually, right? :-)

Michael

is there a linux version of a .bat file or something I can have run as root on startup to automate all this for me?

There is not bat file...I wish I knew redhat better. You can always recompile your kernel and make it a part of it instead of modules. THen it would work.

You can try adding the three lines you use for the modules into the /etc/rc.d/rc.local, this will load the modules just before the login screen.

You just add the three lines for the modules you require the way you would add them on the command line.

modprobe xxxx
modprobe xxxx
modprobe xxxx


Also I believe that RH enables usb-storage by default.

Then for mounting the ZIP you can edit your .bashrc file in your User directory or if you want everybody to be able to use the command put it in /etc/bashrc and add the line you use to mount it:

alias zip=mount -v /dev/xx /mnt/xx
alias uzip=umount -v /mnt/xx

However if you can send what your /etc/fstab looks like we might be able to get a better grasp as to what is happening in your fstab.

Where xx is the dev and xx is the directory you created to mount the zip to.

Then whenever you want to mount the Zip drive you would just use zip in a console or xterm.

Voila your Zip is mounted and then just use uzip to unmount.

Hope this helps

OK...I tried editing rc.local like you said...no effect. Nothing seems to load these modules before login. So I turn to the other promising possibility mentioned...how would I go about recompiling my kernel to include these instead of modules, like busbarn suggested?

Or would switching to gentoo be a better solution? I'm a new linux user, struggling to switch over from windows, and I just installed Redhat because that's what I'd always heard of. I read the gentoo vs. redhat thread, and it sounds promising, but does "hardware compatability" that they promise really mean this problem will go away? I'm still early enough in, I wouldn't mind switching to gentoo if it would be better for me in the long run.

Thoughts?
Thanks
Michael

problem 1: User stupidity...

In my fstab file, I targeted /dev/sdb4 instead of /dev/sda4...think that might make a difference? ;-)

Also, in rc.local, I was giving the entire path and ending it with a .o. That didn't work either. Now everything's working perfectly!!! Finally!

Thanks so much for all your help...
Michael

Always glad to be of assistance, and kudos to you for not giving up because something didn't work right out of the box.