N.B.: there's nothing in here that isn't in the Zip Disk Mini-HOWTO , so I'm going to remove it from the index page, but not from the site, in case there are search engine links.
If you want to get the Zip drive module
imm.o
(or
ppa
for that matter) to autoload, check out autoloadimm.html.
I bought an Iomega Zip 2000 Kit, and wanted to use it under Linux. Using `Potato' I found it was not necessary to recompile the kernel. The standard Potato kernel includes SCSI support, which is nice, because the parallel port versions of the Zip drive require it. (If you do not have the SCSI support in your kernel you may have to recompile, but I have no idea about such things! You should read the Zip Disk Mini-HOWTO and Kernel HOWTO if you need to).
The Zip Drive which comes with the Zip 2000 Kit is a parallel port version. I say `a' because there are more than one. `insmod ppa' did not work, as you can see below.
henry:/# insmod ppa
Using /lib/modules/2.2.17/scsi/ppa.o
/lib/modules/2.2.17/scsi/ppa.o: init_module: Device or resource busy
Hint: this error can be caused by incorrect module parameters,
including invalid IO or IRQ parameters
As the Zip Disk Mini-HOWTO said, I checked dmesg:
19:58 /$ dmesg
.
.
.
ppa: Version 2.03 (for Linux 2.2.x)
WARNING - no ppa compatible devices found.
As of 31/Aug/1998 Iomega started shipping parallel
port ZIP drives with a different interface which is
supported by the imm (ZIP Plus) driver. If the
cable is marked with `AutoDetect', this is what has
happened.
scsi : 0 hosts.
So instead I loaded the imm driver but it didn't give me the huge load time message the Zip Disk Mini-HOWTO shows. I just got a couple of lines: (I imagine the rest only appears if you are on the console.)
henry:/home/tom# insmod imm
Using /lib/modules/2.2.17/scsi/imm.o
Having already created my /mnt/zip directory I tried to mount one of my existing Windoze disks, using the fact that DOS Zips use partition 4 (I don't know why).
henry:/# mount -t msdos /dev/sda4 /mnt/zip
henry:/# ls /mnt/zip
atom new.zip progra~1 redant
But the msdos file-system type does not support long (or mixed case) file names, so to get these you need the vfat (FAT32) filesystem:
henry:/# #-- first umount the disk --#
henry:/# umount /mnt/zip
henry:/# #-- then remount as vfat --#
henry:/# mount -t vfat /dev/sda4 /mnt/zip
henry:/# ls /mnt/zip
Atom RedAnt new.zip programming
Lovely. Now I wanted to be free of M$ and format my own native Linux Zip disks. This is how I did it, basically copied from the Zip Disk Mini-HOWTO with annotations (make sure you have an (umounted) disk in the drive, and you do not mind its contents being erased):
`5.3. Re-format as a native Linux disk
If you want to erase a ZIP disk and make a Linux native file
system on it. You should use fdisk on the entire disk:
fdisk /dev/sda
and delete any existing partitions (with the d command).
The only partition I had to delete was the
existing DOS partion 4
Then create a new partition with the n command, make it primary
partition number 1,
You can use the default values for this
use w to write the partition table to disk,
and quit with q. Format the partition:
mke2fs /dev/sda1
This didn't work the first time, I had to
quit and restart mke2fs. Maybe just a blip
(The 1 is the number that you gave this partition in
fdisk). Now you can mount the disk:
mount -t ext2 /dev/sda1 /mnt/zip
(re-using that mount point we created before).'
(Note that this ext2 formatted disk has its data on partition 1, unlike the DOS disk, which used 4)
You can add the following line to /etc/fstab if you like:
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
.
.
.
/dev/sda1 /mnt/zip ext2 defaults,user,noauto 0 0
This will allow anyone on your system to mount a Linux formatted Zip disk with:
20:21 /$ mount /mnt/zip
If you only want root to be able to access the Zip then use only `defaults,noauto' under options, instead of `defaults,user,noauto'.