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As distributed the Redhat 6.0 kernel with all redhat updates released through 30Aug99 does not function with an Iomega internal ATAPI zip drive. Symptoms: drive can be mounted, single files can be read and written. When large numbers of files are copied "cp -r" to a vfat formated disk, the directory structure below the top couple levels is completely unreadable. After this has occured it is impossible to deleted the affected directory tree. Since the integrety of the data cannot be relyed upon, the drive is essentially useless. Since the drive appears to work, this problem can easily cause serious loss of data. Work around: I found that if the kernel is rebuilt with CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDEFLOPPY is not set CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDESCSI = y CONFIG_CHR_DEV_SG=y (not verified as necessary) then the zip drive functions well. This apparently forces the zip drive to be accessed via a SCSI emulation. Naive suggestion: Build the default RH kernel with the listed changes. This also provides zip eject functionality. See "Running an ATAPI Zip Drive" by Steve Beach. Further configuration and hardware information can be supplied upon request.
we should have a kernel errata shortly that addresses this issue.