[techtalk] Parallel port zip drives under RH 7.1 (2.4 kernel change, perhaps)

[Daniel Manrique]

> Well... Red Hat 7.1 didn't setup my zip drive for me the way Mandrake did 
> recently, so I added the above alias line to my /etc/modules.conf file (yep, 
> I was aware of that change) and followed the steps above and... the system 
> tells me that /dev/sda4 is not a recognized device.  ppa is loaded.
> 
> I went into Preferences->Information->SCSI in KDE2 and found this:
> 
> Attached devices:
> Host: scsi0 Channel: 00 Id: 06 Lun: 00
>   Vendor: IOMEGA   Model:  ZIP 100           Rev:  D.09
>   Type:  Direct-Access                           ANSI SCSI revision: 02
> 
> I saw the SCSI ID of 6, but /dev/sda6 doesn't work either.  Obviously, the OS 
> knows it's there.  How do I make it work?

There's no relationship between the SCSI ID of a device and the partition
within that device. All zip disks (notice, *disks*) use the fourth
partition. So it would always be /dev/sdX4.

As for that mysterious X, that also doesn't necessarily have to do with
the SCSI id for the device. I have a SCSI zipdrive on ID 5 and it's not
sde (e=5). it's sda. Also, I have a scanner on ID 4, and it doesn't "push"
the zip drive to sdb. However, if I had more SCSI disks, their letters
would probably change; furthermore, if I had a single unit with multiple
LUNs (logical units), i suppose it would also have several drive letters.

As far as I can see, the ppa driver you're using emulates a SCSI
interface. That part seems to be working fine. However, it looks like
you'd have to load another driver or module to have your zip be recognized
as a disk drive.

I'm not that familiar with your kernel's module setup but for what i've
seen, the scsi disk module is called sd_mod, so doing:

modprobe sd_mod 

would probably do the trick. After that, use the dmesg command to see
whether the driver loaded and found something. It should then tell you
which device your zip has assigned.

You might want to try all this, let us know if it doesnt work, if it
doesn't we'll keep looking ..

	- Roadmaster

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