IDE internal IOMega Zip 100 drive not automatically recognized on boot.
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IDE internal IOMega Zip 100 drive not automatically recognized on boot.
I have an internal IDE zip 100 drive as a slave on the secondary IDE port. Linux has seen it and has set it up as /dev/hdd. Further I can read what's in the drive using mtools. So far so good. However, on each reboot, the zip drive disappears, along with the /dev/hdd block device link. Believing that it was only the /dev/hdd link that was disappearing, I created a new link called /dev/zip to the actual block device which is located at /dev/ide/host0/bus1/target1/lun0/disc. However, it is really the disc block device that disappears on each reboot. I can get it back and use the zip 100. To do so, I have to open up a file manager window (konqueror), go to /dev and click the reload button and suddenly the disc block device is there. Even this would be fine, if I could automate the process. However, whatever konqueror does while refreshing /dev, I haven't been able to duplicate in a terminal shell that I could then add to rc.local.
So far, from a terminal shell, I have tried:
ls -al /dev/ide/host0/bus1/target1/lun0/disc --> "no such file or directory"
ls -al /dev/zip --> red blinking unknown link reference
konqueror /dev/ide/host0/bus1/target1/lun0 pulls up an empty lun0 directory
modprobe ide --> module ide not found
mount -t auto /dev/zip /mnt/hdd4 --> device /dev/zip does not exist
mount -t auto /dev/ide/host0/bus1/target1/lun0/disc /mnt/hdd4 --> device /dev/ide/host0/bus1/target1/lun0/disc does not exist
"modprobe ide-floppy" worked and it can be done much earlier in the boot sequence than rc.local by adding "ide-floppy" to /etc/modules. This also activates /dev/hdd as well as /dev/zip. So, the zip drive can now be accessed with mtools and fdisk, which works. However, it would also be nice to be able to mount it, which still can't be done. From a root console:
mount -t msdos /dev/hdd4 /mnt/hdd4 --> special device /dev/hdd4 does not exist.
mount -t msdos /dev/hdd /mnt/hdd4 --> wrong filesystem type...or too many mounted systems.
The zip disk is a preformatted PC type disk with a FAT16 partition as partition #4. Any suggestions on how to make the zip drive mountable?
Your system may be having trouble automatically generating the device file when a disk is inserted. The above commands will let you know if this is a problem. If it is, you may be able to create a mounting script which generates hddx using the mknod command and then mounts the device.
Last edited by kilgoretrout; 02-14-2006 at 09:14 AM.
I assume you have looked in your /dev directory and determined that there is no /dev/hdd4 after inserting a zip disk in the drive. On the other hand, your output indicates that the kernel is definitely picking up the device. udev should dynamically create hdd4 on insertion of the disk but apparently it's not. Try creating hdd4 with mknod like so:
# mknod -m 777 /dev/hdd4 b 22 68
and then, mount the drive:
# mount -t msdos /dev/hdd4 /mnt/hdd4
If this works, post back. You will have to recreate hdd4 every time you reboot as it will probably not survive. I think you should be able to automate this by putting the above mknod command at the end of your rc.local init script.
FWIW, I have had this problem since MDK 10.0. (It worked fine in 9.2 and all previous versions I used.) Then again, I have been using s USB Key for everything I used to use my Zip drive for, so I have never bothered to see that it got fixed.
IIRC mdk10 is when they went to the 2.6 kernel which uses udev to create device files dynamnically instead of devfs which had a load of static device files in /dev. I'm fairly certain the problem here is with inadequate support for ide zip drives in udev. As you point out, most people have abandoned their zip drives for usb pen drives, leaving little motivation to work on this old technology.
I recall going through this identical problem with somebody else back when 2.6 came out. I'm pretty sure the solution was to create the device with mknod and then automate the whole procedure through in rc.local. That's essentially what I'm suggesting here.
This worked and, even better, /dev/hdd4 does survive the reboot process (probably because hdd now gets recreated on each reboot using /etc/modules in time to rescue /dev/hdd4). So, now /dev/hdd4 can be set up in /etc/fstab and I can now mount and unmount the drive from a regular user console.
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