IDE Zip drive, devfs and ide-floppy

TGL

Hi,

I've got an IDE Zip drive, and I can't make it work with devfs:
- if I boot with a disk in the drive, then hdd and hdd4 are created, everything is fine.
- else, I have no hdd/hdd4 device, and don't know what to do.

I've got an ide-floppy module, but loading it at boot time doesn't change anything. I think I just need to add something in my devfs config file to monitor the drive, but I really don't know what (gentoo is my first devfs distrib). And the ZIP-Drive-HOWTO didn't help.

Thanks for your help,

smtanner · Posted: Wed Jun 19, 2002 7:49 pm Post subject:

I would like to know the solution to this as well. Seems this is a bug with devfs. I tried using scsi emulation with my zip drive to see if that would work as well but it had the same problem, the device sda4 would not be created by devfs unless there was a zip disk in the zip drive during boot.

delta407 · Posted: Wed Jun 19, 2002 7:57 pm Post subject:

No, this is not a bug with devfs, this is a problem with the IDE floppy driver.

From the Linux IDE-Floppy Driver Homepage:

TGL · Posted: Wed Jun 19, 2002 9:35 pm Post subject:

Yet another web page to monitor, until they find a solution. Thank you, delta407, for your reply.

brian33x51 · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 16 Jun 2002 Posts: 118

Ha!

Found a way to get my ide zip 100 drive to work with autofs.

Here's what I did:

1.) Build in scsi emulation into your kernel. Add "hd?=ide-scsi" to the grub kernel line. Mine is "hdd=ide-scsi". I also have an internal dvd and a firewire burner all using the scsi driver.

2.) Download the program "scsiadd" from http://llg.cubic.org/tools/
(I'll work on getting an ebuild for this thing).

3.) Find out which scsi device it. I fgured out that mine's on "/dev/scsi/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/"

4.) Run "./scsiadd -r scsi/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/" to remove device (not sure if this is necessary, i'm tyring to fix my automounter timeout)

5.) Run "./scsiadd -a scsi/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/". The partition /dev/sda4 should be available.

smtanner · Posted: Tue Jun 25, 2002 4:07 am Post subject:

I though this might be an ide bug, that is why I tried scsi emulation. I expected that would solve the problem if it was do to an ide driver problem. Mandrake uses devfs and there is now problem with zip disks when using mandrake 8.2. I notices that for zip drives, mandrake uses scsi emulation.

TGL · Posted: Tue Jun 25, 2002 7:13 pm Post subject:

brian33x51: thanks a lot, it works! The only problem is I have to put a disk in the drive before using "scsiadd", so I can't put it in an init script. But no matter, that's really better than rebooting

smtanner: I'm curious to know how they do on Mandrake. Did you mean you still have it on your box? I would really like to see their devfs.conf file...

overshoot · n00b Joined: 19 May 2002 Posts: 62 Location: Socorro, NM

Add the kernel parameter

hd?=ide-floppy

(in my case hda)

Works for me.

smtanner · Posted: Sat Jul 27, 2002 4:32 am Post subject:

Okay, I had to revive this thread because I found a decent solution ala Mandrake. Using scsi emulation (hd?=ide-scsi) will solve the problem is /etc/fstab is set up right.

If scsi emulation is used and a disc is not inserted during boot, the link /dev/sda4 is still not created but you can access the zip drive through /dev/scsi/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part4 (that is what is is for me it may be a different target depending on what other scsi or scsi emulation you have) which will be created when a disc is inserted. This works even if the zip disc was not in the drive during boot.

wilbertnl

I added the following lines in /etc/devfs.conf

# Create /dev/discs/hde
LOOKUP ^hde$ CFUNCTION GLOBAL mksymlink ide/host2/bus0/target0/lun0/disc hde
REGISTER ^ide/host2/bus0/target0/lun0/disc$ CFUNCTION GLOBAL mksymlink $devname hde
UNREGISTER ^ide/host2/bus0/target0/lun0/disc$ CFUNCTION GLOBAL unlink $devname hde

# Create /dev/discs/hde1
LOOKUP ^hde1$ CFUNCTION GLOBAL mksymlink ide/host2/bus0/target0/lun0/part1 hde1
REGISTER ^ide/host2/bus0/target0/lun0/part1$ CFUNCTION GLOBAL mksymlink $devname hde1
UNREGISTER ^ide/host2/bus0/target0/lun0/part1$ CFUNCTION GLOBAL unlink $devname hde1

# Create /dev/discs/hde4
LOOKUP ^hde4$ CFUNCTION GLOBAL mksymlink ide/host2/bus0/target0/lun0/part4 hde4
REGISTER ^ide/host2/bus0/target0/lun0/part4$ CFUNCTION GLOBAL mksymlink $devname hde4
UNREGISTER ^ide/host2/bus0/target0/lun0/part4$ CFUNCTION GLOBAL unlink $devname hde4

I have an additional Promise Ultra66 pci-card, that explains host2.
Now I can use devfs AND my Iomega zip drive without any trick!

You need to find your own host and lun, but I guess that you will figure that. For me there was no need to do anything else than these lines in /etc/devfs.

My kernels are 2.4.19-rc3/gentoo-r7

Hope this helps,
_________________
Wilbert van Bakel
Strive for excellence, not perfection

TGL

vlaflip · Posted: Tue Nov 19, 2002 1:11 am Post subject: another solution (kinda dirty...)

I have found another workaround for the devfs and ide-floppy problems
it's quite dirty, but it works... :twisted:

I didn't feel like recompiling my kernel for scsi-emulation, wich i don't wan't to use for anything but that ZIP drive of mine...

my zip drive is /dev/hdd, the major an minor numbers where borrowed from an old bootdisk (tom's rtbt version ??, see http://www.toms.net)

this my solution, i've added the following lines to /etc/conf.d/local.start

vlaflip · Posted: Thu Nov 21, 2002 9:16 am Post subject:

update!!

it not nessesary to put those lines in /etc/conf.d/local.start

it's enough to execute those commands just once, devfs remembers them after reboot (on my system, if it doens't just use the local.start trick)

TomorrowPlusX · Posted: Fri Nov 22, 2002 6:03 am Post subject: Pardon my ignorance

OK, I finally bit the bullet and used hdc=ide-scsi to get my zip250 working. And, amazingly, it works! What amazes me even more, is that if I do an ls on /dev/discs/disc1 without a zip inserted I see just "disc" but after inserting a zip, I see "disc" & "part4". So -- this tells me that auto-insert notification of some sort is working.

Now, what I'd like to know, is wether there is a devfsd.conf setting which will allow for an automount? Given that KDE will automatically show mounted devices on the desktop now, I have this fantasy that two years after ditching BeOS I can once again simply insert a zip disk into my thinkpad and have it magically appear on my desktop.

Any ideas? Or do I have to write a daemon (or just a shell script which runs periodically) which looks for /dev/discs/disc1/part4 and issues "mount /mnt/zip" when it's present.

I'd like this to be as devfs friendly as possible, of course ;)

Phleg · n00b Joined: 17 Oct 2002 Posts: 16

Have you looked at the automount package? DevFS doesn't handle mounting, only population of the /dev filesystem.

pheelay · Posted: Sat Jan 18, 2003 3:05 pm Post subject:

I found that if u have a disk in the drive when u 'modprobe ide-floppy' everything works fine

Saves all the SCSI-emulation lark!

pheelay

Forse · Posted: Wed Mar 19, 2003 7:35 pm Post subject: Might sound a little lame

Hi, I thought of bying a ZIP750 drive for my server backups (can't trust anything these sad days) and I have couple of questions about ZIP drives:

Thnx a lot in advance

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pheelay · Posted: Wed Mar 19, 2003 11:09 pm Post subject:

there's Zip 750 now?! nice!

Personally, I dont find Zip disks reliable for storage. I get endless 'click of death' on both my Zip100 and Zip250 drives, particularly on large transfers. Dont know how Linux does a much better recovery job than windows tho

pheelay · Posted: Wed Mar 19, 2003 11:13 pm Post subject:

Would CDRs or CDRWs not be a better solution to Zip750 for backups? The Zip750 disks cost about the price of 30+ CDRs?!!