checking partitions, zip drive in Linux

[HuFlungDung]

I've got this little problem with my Iomega zip100 drive: it seems that I have to have a disk in the drive before I boot up, and that I can never remove it until I get out of Linux (dual boot to WinME).

I click on "Unmount" the zip drive and it appears to unmount because the option changes to mount. Anyway, even though the disk is unmounted, I still cannot eject the disk by pressing the button on the front of the drive.

Could this have to do with how I boot up? The only way I have found to get past this boot hangup:

Checking partitions.....
hdb interrupt lost

is to add this boot parameter, (must have a disk in the zip drive):
linux /dev/hdb=hdb4

Some how, I think that this parameter has somehow made the zip disk a permanent part of the system, but I don't know how else to get past that "checking partitions" problem.

[HuFlungDung]

I'm still a bit confused about what is going on, but it seems to be getting a little better. The status so far:

I have to have a zip disk in the drive when booting up or else Linux hangs on the checking partitions thing.

If I have the disk in the drive, then boot up progresses normally.

When I get into the desktop, I can click on the zip disk icon and mount the disk. I can see what is on it (it is MS DOS formatted, and I want to it to be that way for the time being).

Then I select unmount and I can remove the disk with the eject button (we need an eject command for these drives).

Now, if I put the same disk back in and try to mount, I get this 5 line error:

Could not mount device
The reported error was:
/dev/hdb4 no such file or directory
mount:I could not determine the file system type, and none was specified

I've also tried to run the command
mount /media/zip
but that doesnt work either

In fstab, the description for the zip drive is:
dev/hdb4, /media/zip,auot, noauto, user 0 0

So how can I remove the disk and then mount it (or another) again?

[trommaster]

sorry, ive never had this problem with my zip drives, is it an internal one?
i just searched google and found something on a mandrake site that says zip drives set as slaves give problems.

zip disks have their data stored on partition 4 (for some reason) thats why its hdb4 (if you were wondering)
there is an eject program. try eject zip or eject /media/zip

[HuFlungDung]

Yes, it is an internal drive, and it is also a slave, I don't see any way around that with my current set up, 4 drives fill up both ide channels (hd, zip, dvd, burner)

I checked my BIOS settings for this drive and noticed that it was initially entered as a LBA hard disk (for description), so I have since changed this to "normal".

Does SuSe Linux 8.0 recognise such a change automatically when booting up, or do I have to "rebuild the kernel" or something (I am still clueless about doing this)?

So Alastair, are you suggesting that only external parallel port zips will work properly? What do you have? Did you have to do anything special to make yours work?

[trommaster]

i have an external, but internals should work fine as well....
do you have a new one or and old one? there is a big difference in the hardware of them, i can' say about how differently they work.
old ones have a paper clip eject button on the front, new ones don't.
changing the bios thing won't need a kernel recompile.
how about changing the zip to a master just to see if it works...(if your competent about doing it)
if we can cross that out we can move to the next thing

Alastair

[HuFlungDung]

I was reading someplace that the lilo.conf file needs to be set up a certain way in order for the zip drive to be mountable.

When I check this file, there are no entries at all for
/dev/hdb
nor
/dev/hdb4
one of which should be correct for my drive.

Any chance you'd have a lilo.conf file (for a computer with a zip drive in it), so I can see what all I need to try inserting into my file?

thanks.

[trommaster]

lilo.conf is only for configurating the os's on the computer. you won't need to put a /dev/hdb entry in there.
what it probally meant is to add a line in the section starting with your linux partition that says something similar to:
append = "/dev/hdb=hdb4"
i think thats the syntax, can someone please check it

Alastair

[trommaster]

yep, thats it

[HuFlungDung]

Okay, I'm making a little bit of headway.

I added that line you suggested into the append= section under
image= /boot/vmlinux

which appears to be the boot configuration for regular linux boot(?)

The thing is that I still must have a zip disk installed in the zip drive while booting, which seems strange to me. Other wise I get the error while checking partitions on the zip drive.

So, I leave a disk in the drive and continue to boot. All is fine and dandy. Now, I can open the zip drive icon, and click mount, see the files on it. I can click unmount. It unmounts. I click mount to remount and it works without giving any errors.

But, if I actually eject the disk, and re-insert it, then I am screwed. I get the error after the mount command that the device doesn't exist.

I'm thinking that my Linux configuration assumes that the zip drive, on an IDE channel is really a hard drive. This would explain the error on booting if no disk is in the drive, and how you cannot "really remove or install a hard disk" while your computer is running.

Am I going to have to install this as a hot swappable device and how would I go about this?

I could be totally off on a tangent, so feel free to give me any appropriate advice.

Thanks for your time, Alastair.

[trommaster]

well, im sorry, i have no frikken idea of whats wrong and how to fix it ??? ??? ???