Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 55871
Zip disk is not always 4th partition of device
Last modified: 2014-03-16 22:24:14 EDT
Description of Problem: Kudzu autodetects an internal Zip drive, and automatically creates a line in /etc/fstab that assigns the 4th partition on that device to the mount point (as described in the Zip mini-HOWTO). However, on some hardware one needs to specify the whole device, not just the 4th partition Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How Reproducible: Every time Steps to Reproduce: 1. Boot a system that has a Zip drive 2. 3. Actual Results: Kudzu creates a line in /etc/fstab of the form /dev/hdd4 /mnt/zip250.0 auto noauto,owner,kudzu 0 0 Attempting to mount the zip drive by clicking on the desktop idon or `mount /mnt/zip250.0' fails, and gives an error message. The same result if one tries `mount -t vfat /dev/hdd4 /mnt/zip250.0' Expected Results: For my hardware, the line should be /dev/hdd /mnt/zip250.0 auto noauto,owner,kudzu 0 0 Mounting now works fine, as does `mount -t vfat /dev/hdd /mnt/zip250.0' Additional Information: This only applies to some hardware (indeed, only one of my two machines) - I can provide fuller details of my setup if you want. The fix is completely trivial once one knows what to do, but is not documented anywhere (not even the Zip mini-HOWTO); I found it by chance on Google at http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/forum/messages/238.html after a whole day of frustration. This needs to be fixed, or at least documented somewhere prominent, to save other people the same hassle.
The kudzu currently in rawhide allows for an /etc/updfstab.conf, where you can configure things such as the default partition to use for a particular device.
And how is the user supposed to know which particular partition to use? How is the user supposed to know that `wrong partition number' is the origin of the problems they are having? The `experts' I consulted on Usenet were convinced that I had either bad media or a faulty drive. In my opintion, this bug isn't fixed unless Kudzu recognizes what to use automatically. Have you done an investigation into which hardware requires `hdd4' and which requires `hdd' ? Have you made inquiries with Iomega?
It's not a property of the hardware. It's a property of how the disk itself was formatted/partitioned.
No, it's *not* a property of the disk. It happens with every disk I've tried (100 or 250). I have two Red Hat 7.2 machines, both with zip250 drives. On one of them I have to mount /dev/hdd, on the other it's /dev/hdb4; if I try /dev/hdd4 on the first I get: mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hdd4, or too many mounted file systems and similarly if I try to mount the *same disk* as /dev/hdb on the other. Do I take it you haven't reproduced the bug?