Support for Iomega zip drives disabled?

bigrigdriver · March 28, 2010, 8:04pm

Have Opensuse disabled support for Iomega external parport zip drives?

I can mount the zip drive under Debian Lenny running the 2.6.26 kernel without any problems. Under Opensuse 10.3 (installed) and Opensuse 11.2 (liveCD) I can’t access the drive. Opensuse doesn’t recognize it.

All of which is odd. When I installed 10.3, the zip was seen an configured in fstab as /dev/sdc4 mounted at /media/zip. It worked fine for a while, then quit. Now, /dev/sdc4 doesn’t exist.

Kde control center says (hardware - partitions) says is there but not mounted.

Hwinfo doesn’t show it; modprobe imm does nothing.

I’m at a loss for ways and means to get Opensuse to recognize my zip drive.

Any thoughts/suggestions would be appreciated.

user · March 28, 2010, 9:32pm

bigrigdriver wrote:

> I can mount the zip drive under Debian Lenny running the 2.6.26 kernel
> without any problems.

are you dual/multi-booting Lenny and openSUSE?

–
palladium

bigrigdriver · March 29, 2010, 12:28am

Yes. Dual boot.

plodder · March 29, 2010, 7:44am

Just do modprobe ppa with the Iomega device connected, switched on and (maybe) the Iomega disk in the drive. Modprobe imm is not applicable to openSUSE.

Hope that helps.

bigrigdriver · March 29, 2010, 7:22pm

No joy. Modprobe loads ppa, lsmod shows it, but still no response from the zip drive with or without a disk in it.

plodder · March 30, 2010, 3:31am

Sorry, I think I was only 50% correct in what I told you. I remembered this morning that I have got two, almost identical, zip100 parallel port external drives (Model Number: Z100P2), which we can call #1 and #2.

With #1 (which has S/N PRDH306GAK and I think may have been manufactured circa 1998 in the Philippines):

modprobe imm: does not work although the module loads correctly according to dmesg.

modprobe ppa: does work correctly; the module loads, the drive runs, the disk is registered and is viewable in, say, Dolphin.

With #2 (which has S/N RRCM19900K and has a manufacturing date of 05/08/2001 in Malaysia):

modprobe ppa: does not work although the module loads correctly according to dmesg.

modprobe imm: does work correctly, the module loads, the drive runs, the disk is registered and is veiwable in Dolphin.

So it looks as though, between 1998 and 2001 possibly, Iomega changed the firmware and you have to use the appropriate kernel module to go with it. Maybe your drive is a third variant?

What is the model number, manufacturing date and place of manufacture on yours?

bigrigdriver · March 30, 2010, 5:27am

I’ve had this external zip 250 since about 1999. It worked under win 98, OpenLinux 1.3 and 2.4, SuSE 7.3 through 9.3, and Opensuse 10.3 (for about 1 year). Then it suddenly stopped working.

It still works under Debian Lenny. The only significant difference I can find is that Deb still calls IDE drives /dev/hd? and SCSI emulated drives /dev/sd?, while Opensuse lists both IDE and SCSI emulated drives as /dev/sd?. In Lenny, my zip drive is /dev/sda4. When I installed Opensuse, my zip was designated /dev/sdc4 and worked flawlessly for about a year, then suddenly quit. /dev/sdc4 was removed from the /dev directory. hwinfo --zip no longer detects the zip drive.

I assume the changes were made during a regular update. I’ve tried comparing the kernels from Lenny and Opensuse (diff -iBy <Lenny config> <Opensuse config>, but nothing obvious stands out. The SCSI driver sections are the same, the ppa and imm module sections are the same, etc.

I just can’t find what has changed in Opensuse to make the zip drive cease to exist.

plodder · March 30, 2010, 8:11am

Well I think it probably does exist, Just a few questions:

What is the output of (as root) fdisk -l, which should list all the disks and their partitions known to the OS?
Are you relying on the Iomega disk partition to always be sdc4? In my case it is but that is because I already have sda and sdb allocated to existing IDE disks. In another situation it could be sdd4 or sde4. Have you hard encoded sdc4 into fstab? See 1) above.
Why are you using hwinfo --zip? That command does not work for my zip drive #2. I have to use hwinfo --scsi.
Have you loaded the kernel modules ppa and imm together? They may conflict. Try removing both with the commands rmmod ppa and rmmod imm with the zip drive turned off. Then plug the zip drive back in and see 5)
What is the last part of dmesg (dmesg|tail) after you do a) modprobe ppa? b) modprobe imm? Note: start with neither module loaded and remove the ppa module with rmmod ppa before trying modprobe imm. Only the last part(s) of dmesg please, otherwise we will be up to our eyeballs in text.

Keep at it!

bigrigdriver · March 30, 2010, 6:51pm

fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000b064e

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 1700 13655218+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 1701 19456 142625070 f W95 Ext’d (LBA)
/dev/sda5 1701 1704 32098+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 1705 2233 4249161 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 2234 3082 6819561 83 Linux
/dev/sda8 3083 10257 57633156 83 Linux
/dev/sda9 10258 19456 73890936 83 Linux

Disk /dev/sdb: 40.0 GB, 40020664320 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4865 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000df16d

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 2 1596 12811837+ bf Solaris
/dev/sdb2 1597 4865 26258242+ 5 Extended
/dev/sdb5 1597 1661 522081 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdb6 1662 4865 25736098+ 83 Linux

fdisk -l shows two IDE drives. I also have two optical drives at /dev/sr0 and /dev/sr1. Sda has Opensuse and Debian, and sdb has Solaris and a data partition.

When I installed Opensuse, /etc/fstab was written to include an entry for /dev/sdc4 mounted at /media/zip. /dev/sdc4 was created also. Sometime since the installation, /dev/sdc4 has been removed, and Opensuse no longer recognizes the zip drive.

hwinfo --scsi
28: SCSI 101.0: 10602 CD-ROM
[Created at block.237]
UDI: /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/storage_model_COMBO_SOHC_5232K
Unique ID: twPO.YMmeFcYWq02
Parent ID: H0_h.X3r6EZCrdhB
SysFS ID: /block/sr0
SysFS BusID: 1:0:1:0
SysFS Device Link: /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:06.0/host1/target1:0:1/1:0:1:0
Hardware Class: cdrom
Model: “LITE-ON COMBO SOHC-5232K”
Vendor: “LITE-ON”
Device: “COMBO SOHC-5232K”
Revision: “NK07”
Driver: “pata_amd”, “sr”
Driver Modules: “pata_amd”
Device File: /dev/sr0 (/dev/sg2)
Device Files: /dev/sr0, /dev/scd0, /dev/disk/by-path/pci-0000:00:06.0-scsi-1:0:1:0, /dev/cdrom, /dev/cdrw, /dev/dvd
Device Number: block 11:0 (char 21:2)
Features: CD-R, CD-RW
Config Status: cfg=no, avail=yes, need=no, active=unknown
Attached to: #7 (IDE interface)
Drive Speed: 52

29: SCSI 400.0: 10602 CD-ROM (DVD)
[Created at block.237]
UDI: /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/storage_model_DVDRW_LH_20A1L
Unique ID: K6gS.PfW+8P_EJX0
Parent ID: RE4e.+mHsRFpE4wC
SysFS ID: /block/sr1
SysFS BusID: 4:0:0:0
SysFS Device Link: /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:08.0/host4/target4:0:0/4:0:0:0
Hardware Class: cdrom
Model: “LITE-ON DVDRW LH-20A1L”
Vendor: “LITE-ON”
Device: “DVDRW LH-20A1L”
Revision: “BL05”
Driver: “sata_nv”, “sr”
Driver Modules: “sata_nv”
Device File: /dev/sr1 (/dev/sg3)
Device Files: /dev/sr1, /dev/scd1, /dev/disk/by-path/pci-0000:00:08.0-scsi-0:0:0:0, /dev/cdrom1, /dev/cdrw1, /dev/dvd1, /dev/dvdrw1
Device Number: block 11:1 (char 21:3)
Features: CD-R, CD-RW, DVD, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW, DVD+DL, DVDRAM
Config Status: cfg=no, avail=yes, need=no, active=unknown
Attached to: #9 (IDE interface)
Drive Speed: 48

hwinfo --scsi does not show my zip drive. I use hwinfo --zip because that’s the command I have always used to show my zip drive in the past.

I have tried loading the modules individually (removing one before trying the other). The only module that loads is ppa; imm does not load. I have tried loading the two modules at the same time (first ppa then imm and first imm then ppa) and still only ppa loads. I have also tried all the above power to the zip drive and with power turned off.
After modprobe ppa, dmesg has this:

dmesg | tail -n 3
SFW2-IN-ACC-RELATED IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=00:1b:11:0c:d6:22:00:14:7c:b8:1b:a8:08:00 SRC=192.168.1.1 DST=192.168.1.51 LEN=256 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=64 ID=29142 PROTO=UDP SPT=53 DPT=7689 LEN=236
SFW2-IN-ACC-RELATED IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=00:1b:11:0c:d6:22:00:14:7c:b8:1b:a8:08:00 SRC=192.168.1.1 DST=192.168.1.51 LEN=208 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=64 ID=29143 PROTO=UDP SPT=53 DPT=7689 LEN=188
ppa: Version 2.07 (for Linux 2.4.x)

Then rmmod ppa, and modprobe imm shows this:

dmesg | tail -n 3
SFW2-IN-ACC-RELATED IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=00:1b:11:0c:d6:22:00:14:7c:b8:1b:a8:08:00 SRC=192.168.1.1 DST=192.168.1.51 LEN=199 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=64 ID=29162 PROTO=UDP SPT=53 DPT=7689 LEN=179
SFW2-IN-ACC-RELATED IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=00:1b:11:0c:d6:22:00:14:7c:b8:1b:a8:08:00 SRC=192.168.1.1 DST=192.168.1.51 LEN=199 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=64 ID=29163 PROTO=UDP SPT=53 DPT=7689 LEN=179
SFW2-IN-ACC-RELATED IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=00:1b:11:0c:d6:22:00:14:7c:b8:1b:a8:08:00 SRC=192.168.1.1 DST=192.168.1.51 LEN=199 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=64 ID=29164 PROTO=UDP SPT=53 DPT=7689 LEN=179

bigrigdriver · March 30, 2010, 7:56pm

Update:
I’ve just booted into Opensuse 10.3 kde i386 liveCD. I was able to modprobe imm and access the zip drive. Hwinfo --scsi didn’t list the drive before loading imm, but it was listed after loading imm. The output of hwinfo showed driver sd required.

I rebooted into my 64 bit installation, and find that there is no sd driver. There is a driver sd_mod (required by scsi_mod) in the 32 bit /lib, but not in the 64 bit /lib.

So, it seems that I don’t have the correct 64 bit drivers to make the zip drive work in Opensuse, but it does work in my 64 bit Debian Lenny installation.

user · March 30, 2010, 8:22pm

bigrigdriver wrote:
> but it does work in my 64 bit Debian Lenny installation.

probably with a 32 bit driver…

the very reason i don’t run 64 is there are so many little
gotcha’s…and no real benefit for about 99% of the users…

–
palladium

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bigrigdriver · March 31, 2010, 4:40am

I don’t think so. This is what file shows me.

file sd_mod.ko
sd_mod.ko: ELF 64-bit LSB relocatable, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), not stripped

I get similar return when I check the Opensuse sd_mod.ko.

plodder · March 31, 2010, 7:58am

Just to make a comment about the 64bit aspect, I am using my zip drives on 64bit Pentium D system and as I said before it works perfectly. All the other hardware I use appears to function without a problem so I rather think we can ignore that aspect for now. Apologies for the following formating, I still haven’t quite got the hang of text insertions, but anyway some questions and comments:

In your first post you said:“Kde control center says (hardware - partitions) says is there but not mounted.” What did you mean by that? It seems strange KDE would show the drive but the rest of the OS cannot find it.
Can you confirm that you are using an external ZIP drive that plugs into the parallel printer port (usually coloured red/magenta) on the back of the PC and not the rather similar looking SCSI variant which may require its own SCSI card (I think)?
Can you confirm that the ZIP drive is the only thing hanging off the printer port? In other words you are not passing through something else to get to the ZIP nor passing though the ZIP to get to something else.
My output from hwinfo --scsi shows both my zip and cdrom drive as follows:

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
suse11p2p4d:~ # hwinfo --scsi
20: SCSI 100.0: 10602 CD-ROM
[Created at block.247]
UDI: /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/storage_model_CD_RW_GCE_8525B
Unique ID: KD9E.jpRIn_O3Qz2
Parent ID: 3p2J.mCg4nggHnv5
SysFS ID: /class/block/sr0
SysFS BusID: 1:0:0:0
SysFS Device Link: /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1f.1/host1/target1:0:0/1:0:0:0
Hardware Class: cdrom
Model: “HL-DT-ST CD-RW GCE-8525B”
Vendor: “HL-DT-ST”
Device: “CD-RW GCE-8525B”
Revision: “1.03”
Driver: “ata_piix”, “sr”
Device File: /dev/sr0 (/dev/sg2)
Device Files: /dev/sr0, /dev/block/11:0, /dev/scd0, /dev/disk/by-path/pci-0000:00:1f.1-scsi-1:0:0:0, /dev/cdrom, /dev/cdrw
Device Number: block 11:0 (char 21:2)
Features: CD-R, CD-RW
Config Status: cfg=no, avail=yes, need=no, active=unknown
Attached to: #11 (IDE interface)
Drive Speed: 52

21: SCSI 206.0: 10603 Floppy Disk
[Created at block.254]
UDI: /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/storage_model_ZIP_100
Unique ID: LUEV.z5_+lhVZsE6
SysFS ID: /class/block/sdc
SysFS BusID: 2:0:6:0
SysFS Device Link: /devices/platform/host2/target2:0:6/2:0:6:0
Hardware Class: floppy
Model: “IOMEGA ZIP 100”
Vendor: “IOMEGA”
Device: “ZIP 100”
Revision: “P.05”
Driver: “sd”
Device File: /dev/sdc (/dev/sg3)
Device Files: /dev/sdc, /dev/block/8:32, /dev/disk/by-path/scsi-0:0:6:0
Device Number: block 8:32-8:47 (char 21:3)
Features: ZIP
Geometry (Logical): CHS 0/64/32
Drive status: no medium
Config Status: cfg=new, avail=yes, need=no, active=unknown
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

As you can see, it does mention an SD driver but lsmod shows no sd module loaded so I suspect it does not mean a kernel module.

If you are in fact using a parallel port ZIP drive then I wonder if the port is being blocked by something else under SUSE but not under your other OSes. That is the reason for asking 3).
As I mentioned before, I had to use imm and ppa as appropriate for my two ZIP drives and they were supposed to be the same model. Without other information available it could be, as I said then, that you have a third firmware variant which neither imm nor ppa supports.

Hope that helps.

bigrigdriver · March 31, 2010, 2:15pm

Oops! My bad. I said Kde control center when I meant Kde info center - partitions. On revisiting the info center, and having /etc/fstab shown in console, I can see now that the info center is showing me the contents of fstab, along with info on partition sizes.
Yes, I can confirm that it’s an external parallel port zip drive.
Yes, I can confirm it’s the only item of hardware connected to the parallel port.
4)I did this yesterday:

I’ve just booted into Opensuse 10.3 kde i386 liveCD. I was able to modprobe imm and access the zip drive. Hwinfo --scsi didn’t list the drive before loading imm, but it was listed after loading imm. The output of hwinfo showed driver sd required

See 4) above.
6)I’ve used this zip drive for years with the imm module, until recently when /dev/sdc4 was removed from /dev and modprobe imm no longer loads the module. Mknod /dev/sdc4 followed by chown command and an attempt to mount the zip drive only gets me the error that /dev/sdc4 is not a block device.
Again, see 4) above.

Oh, well. I have a new dvd-rw drive on the way to replace one that gave up the ghost recently. When it’s installed, I’ll burn the latest Opensuse 11.2 and upgrade. Maybe that will fix the problem.