Re: [vox-tech] DevFS: it works! But problems with IOMEGA Zip...

["R. Douglas Barbieri" <douMAPSg@dooglio.net>]

Hey Pete,

I wanted to let you know that I figured out how to get my zip drive 
working--it was pretty easy, actually.

Looking at the man page for devfsd, I saw a good example for getting the
good ole cdrom softlink persistent. There is a command called LOOKUP--here
is the example line as I've implemented it in my system's /etc/devfsd.conf
file:

LOOKUP ^cdrom$ CFUNCTION GLOBAL symlink ${mntpnt}/cdroms/cdrom4 $devpath

My CDROM happens to be /dev/cdroms/cdrom4 (the example had cdrom0
instead), but your mileage may vary.  What's cool about this is that as
soon as the path /dev/cdrom is accessed, a softlink magically appears in
the /dev filesystem. All I need to do is type 'ls -l /dev/cdrom'. Cool, 
huh?

So, on to my zip drive (first I had to put a bloody disk in the drive :|,
then a scsi entry appeared--D'OH!). So, all I have to do is add a line in
my devfsd.conf file like so:

LOOKUP ^zip$ CFUNCTION GLOBAL symlink \
	${mntpnt}/scsi/host0/bus0/target5/lun0/part4 $devpath

Once I access /dev/zip (which was soft linked to /dev/sda4 in my old 
dev directory), voila! access to my zip drive happens!

Doug

On Wed, 21 Nov 2001, Peter Jay Salzman wrote:

> hi doug,
> 
> i don't have a zip drive, so i can't help you much.  however, i found some
> things on http://groups.google.com/advanced_group_search that may be of help.
> did a search on "zip drive devfs" and found some things which might be of use
> to you.
> 
> (excuse me if you tried deja already.  it's my knee jerk reaction for most
> things)
> 
> here's an example of something which seemed relevant (this is still
> "experimental" so ymmv for a few months):
> 
> btw, it also occured to me that:
> 1. the linux-kernel archives might be a good place to look too.  i'm sure
> they have a searchable archive somewhere.
> 2. what kernel version are you using?  you may want to use the most recent
> kernel version, especially since devfs is being aggresively developed.
> 
> ----
> A brief update: Both my scsi JAZ drive and IDE Zip drive do not show up under
> devfs after a
> reboot.  However, if I try to mount my Jaz using the old command:
>         mount /dev/sda4 /mnt/jaz
> it works, even though neither /dev/sda4 nor
> /dev/scsi/host0/bus0/target1/lun0/part4 exist yet.  After the mount they
> do.  Trying to mount the devfs location initially will fail until the node
> /dev/scsi/host0/bus0/target1/lun0/part4 has been created by the old
> non-devfs mount command above. In order to mount my Zip disk I must first try
> mounting it with the old
> command:
>         mount /dev/hdd4 /mnt/zip
> and THEN reload the ide-floppy module, THEN try remounting using the old
> command, after which the devfs node /dev/ide/host0/bus1/target1/lun0/part4
> then exists. Very odd.  Any ideas why? JTD
> ----
> 
> begin: R. Douglas Barbieri <doug@dooglio.net> quote
> > Well, Pete, I have to say that you were right--hooking up devfs was a
> > snap! All I had to do was recompile the kernel with DEVFS turned on (I'm
> > running Redhat 7.1--compiling the kernel source is a snap with the RPM
> > package kernel-source installed).
> > 
> > The only thing I can't get to work is my IOMEGA Zip drive. I do a modprobe 
> > for imm, and it used to become available on /dev/sda4. Under devfs, a 
> > /dev/scsi/... directory appears, but has no entries. Has anyone out there 
> > had experience with this? Is there some tuning I have to do in 
> > /etc/devfs.conf?
> > 
> > Thanks!
> > 
> > Doug
> 
> 

-- 
R. Douglas Barbieri
doug@dooglio.net
www.dooglio.net