Very Computer

Thanks to all that sent me suggestions on how to get the $%(#!! thing
working.  Help, particularly the free kind, is always appreciated.

Success came when, contrary to what the FAQ implies, I discovered that
a parallel port zip drive is not ALWAYS /dev/sda4.

On my computer it happened to be /dev/sdc4 -- maybe that's because I
have 3 SCSI adapters in it and a handful of SCSI hard drives and peripherals.
I dunno.

So if you're ready to take a chainsaw to your spiffy new ZIP drive because
you've done
  $ insmod parport
  $ insmod ppa
  $ mount -t vfat /dev/sda4 /zipdrive
and all the damn thing says back to you is
    mount: /dev/sda4 is not a valid block device
try /dev/somethingelse, in particular /dev/sdb4, /dev/sdc4, and so on.

--
Phil Geiger

Thanks, Phillips, for the detailed post.

Quote:>Thanks to all that sent me suggestions on how to get the $%(#!! thing
>working.  Help, particularly the free kind, is always appreciated.

>Success came when, contrary to what the FAQ implies, I discovered that
>a parallel port zip drive is not ALWAYS /dev/sda4.

>On my computer it happened to be /dev/sdc4 -- maybe that's because I
>have 3 SCSI adapters in it and a handful of SCSI hard drives and peripherals.
>I dunno.

>So if you're ready to take a chainsaw to your spiffy new ZIP drive because
>you've done
>  $ insmod parport
>  $ insmod ppa
>  $ mount -t vfat /dev/sda4 /zipdrive
>and all the damn thing says back to you is
>    mount: /dev/sda4 is not a valid block device
>try /dev/somethingelse, in particular /dev/sdb4, /dev/sdc4, and so on.

What dist/version are you running?  I couldn't get mine to work, and I only
have one SCSI device (the main boot drive).  How many devices do you have
total?  sdc would be the third device; which adapter is it associated with?  
The Iomega parallel port device looks like a separate SCSI adapter; on mine I
couldn't even get the ppa.o module to load because it wanted to use sda4 and
my main hard disk is already sda.  How/where do I tell the zip module to use a
different SCSI disk device?  Do I need to change the driver source code?

Thanks in advance, Steve

The FAQ assumes that you don't have a SCSI adaptor already installed.
It makes the parallel port the first adaptor. ie
/dev/sda
       ^

In a system with a real scsi adaptor I think the parallel port gets the
last choice and so the heighest letter. In Phillip's case
- 2 SCSI adaptors
/dev/sda
/dev/sdb
- and the parallel port zip drive
/dev/sdc

The 4 after that refers to the partition on the drive. For some strange
unknown reason iomega makes the data partition on their disks partition
number 4. Other manufactures use the sensibe choice of partition 1.

So on my system with 1 primary windows partiton, 2 linux partitons (one
swap) and 2 windows extended partitions and a parallel port zip drive.

/dev/sda1   - primary windows partition
/dev/sda2   - primary linux partition
/dev/sda3   - linux swap partition
/dev/sda5  
/dev/sda6   - two extended partitions (they start at 5 afaik)

/dev/sdb4   - parallel port zip drive for iomega zip disks
/dev/sdb1   - parallel port zip drive for other zip disks

You might want to read the SCSI howto for more (accurate) information.
:-)

--
Hayden

"You need an IQ upgrade to use that piece of software."
        -- Dogbert

On 16 Jul 1999 15:25:59 GMT, Phillip George Geiger

<grin>

Or you can look in /var/log/messages (or wherever your syslog
writes to), where - as soon as "insmod ppa" succeeds, you will see
something like this (note the last line - I suspect you would have
seen sdc instead of sda there!)

Jul 19 12:51:44 ltsitaram kernel: ppa: Version 2.03 (for Linux 2.2.x)
Jul 19 12:51:44 ltsitaram kernel: ppa: Found device at ID 6, Attempting to use EPP 32 bit
Jul 19 12:51:44 ltsitaram kernel: ppa: Communication established with ID 6 using EPP 32 bit
Jul 19 12:51:44 ltsitaram kernel: scsi0 : Iomega VPI0 (ppa) interface
Jul 19 12:51:44 ltsitaram kernel: scsi : 1 host.
Jul 19 12:51:44 ltsitaram kernel:   Vendor: IOMEGA    Model: ZIP 100           Rev: J.03
Jul 19 12:51:44 ltsitaram kernel:   Type:   Direct-Access                      ANSI SCSI revision: 02
Jul 19 12:51:44 ltsitaram kernel: Detected scsi removable disk sda at scsi0, channel 0, id 6, lun 0
Jul 19 12:51:45 ltsitaram kernel: SCSI device sda: hdwr sector= 512 bytes. Sectors= 196608 [96 MB] [0.1 GB]
Jul 19 12:51:45 ltsitaram kernel: sda: Write Protect is off
Jul 19 12:51:45 ltsitaram kernel:  sda: sda4

Linux doesn't keep things secret ;-)

No need to type a lot, use dmesg to have a look at that.  :-)

BTW I use this script as root to make the zipdrive available

#!/bin/sh

# Script to load zipdrive
# 18-7-99 LLA

# Use the 2nd parallel port
modprobe -v ppa 0x278,1,6,0

# The rest is in /etc/fstab
mount /mnt  -v

Setting the drive with options rw,noauto,user in /etc/fstab, enables
other users to unmount/mount as they like. But only when root gives
them initial access, as it should be.
When the systems admin wants to grant acces al the time, I thinks an
autoload of the ppa module is needed. (another kernel compile) I did
not do this since I do not use the zipdrive that often.

Many thanks to Kyle Denzie for the zipdrive mini howto v 2.2 !

cull

: What dist/version are you running?

It is, I believe, the newer of the 100 MB parallel port zip drives.  I'm
not at home now but the cable has "autodetect" or something like that written
on it.  The OS is Red Hat 6.0 with the pre-compiled SMP kernel.

: I couldn't get mine to work, and I only
: have one SCSI device (the main boot drive).  How many devices do you have
: total?  sdc would be the third device; which adapter is it associated with?  

I have an onboard adapter (Adaptec 7800 chipset, ultra wide) and a PCI card
(AHA-2940, narrow).  There is nothing on the onboard adapter; the card has
a hard drive (/dev/sda1 is my root filesystem, /dev/sda5 is swap); a MO
drive (/dev/sdb1) and CD-ROM (/dev/cdrom).
For a while I had a third SCSI adapter that came with a scanner installed.
It's not well supported under SANE though so I've moved the scanner to a
NT 4.0 machine.

I can't remember if someone told me, or if I just assumed, that if /dev/sda4
wasn't a valid partition on my hard drive the ZIP drive would take it.

(I would have bought a SCSI ZIP drive but I received it as a gift.)

I suppose the FAQ author assumed that if one had a SCSI adapter one would
have done the smart thing and bought a SCSI ZIP drive, therefore if you had
the parallel port version you must not have a SCSI adapter.  Hence the
implication that a parallel port ZIP drive is *always* /dev/sda4.

: The Iomega parallel port device looks like a separate SCSI adapter; on mine I
: couldn't even get the ppa.o module to load because it wanted to use sda4 and
: my main hard disk is already sda.  How/where do I tell the zip module to use a
: different SCSI disk device?  Do I need to change the driver source code?

: Thanks in advance, Steve

I couldn't load ppa.o until I explicitly loaded parport.o first.  I never
had a printer attached to the port, so for a while it didn't occur to me to
load the driver for the parallel port.

--
Phil Geiger

On Tue, 20 Jul 1999 22:08:58 GMT, L.G.E. Laproi

It helps to get people into the habit of looking at the syslog
file :-)  In particular, the timestamp that /var/log/messages has
is very useful sometimes (when debugging problems like - as I am
right now on a friend's machine - PCMCIA troubles, it helps to see
these messages with exact timestamps on them).

But of course, you're absolutely right - dmesg is better for this
specific purpose.  Just that I've stopped using it and so it's not
the first thing I think of :-)

Sitaram

That is the cable they made for the ZipPlus, so you should use the imm driver.

Quote:>...
>I can't remember if someone told me, or if I just assumed, that if /dev/sda4
>wasn't a valid partition on my hard drive the ZIP drive would take it.
>(I would have bought a SCSI ZIP drive but I received it as a gift.)

I think that the drive is assigned the first available *letter*.
Your first scsi hard drive is /dev/sda; the second is /dev/sdb; ....
When you run out of real drives, the next letter should be used for
the Zip.  On that device, the fourth partition is the one that Iomega
has preformatted.

Quote:>...

If the driver has been loaded, various logs will have been written.
Others have written about how you can find them.  There is also a file
in /proc (I think it is called /proc/partitions) that will show all
partitions (and the disks containing them).  Generally, /proc is the
place to look for an efficient statement of the current state of the
system.  I think I once noticed that loading the driver while there
was no disk in the Zip drive will give an entry for the whole disk,
but no partitons identified until you force the system to read the
partition table.  You can probably just ask to mount the partition
where you know it will be found, but fdisk definitely does read the
partition table, so it will teach the system all it needs to know
about the layout of a disk.

--
R. T. Bumby **  Rutgers Math || Amer. Math. Monthly Problems Editor 1992--1996

Telephone:    [USA] 732-445-0277 (full-time message line) FAX 732-445-5530

if auto-detect is on your cabel, it is a zip plus.
type as root:

insmod imm
then mount your drive and enjoy.
Jon