If you have built in all the required components, the kernel should recognize your adapter and drive at boot time. If you are using a loadable module for your driver, the following discussion applies once that module is loaded.
For the most part, the SCSI and parallel versions of the drive behave identically, except that the parallel version is somewhat slower.
When your system boots it should display several pieces of information about your adapter, your drive, and the disk in the drive. If you do not have a disk in the drive, some of this information will be missing and will only appear when you insert a disk and then touch the drive (make some attempt to access it). Beginning users are advised to boot their system with a disk in the drive - things are less confusing that way !
Exactly where these messages will appear depends on how your system is configured. Often they will be displayed to your system console, but they may be diverted into a log file such as /var/adm/messages. Usually, you can retrieve the last couple of screens of kernel messages with the dmesg command, if you can't find them anywhere else.
If you need to get someone to help you with anything, a copy of this log information is critical. Try to send as many of the relevant log messages as you can along with any bug report.
Here is a sample of what the kernel's log messages should look like:
scsi0 : PPA driver version 0.26 using 8-bit mode on port 0x378.
scsi : 1 host.
Vendor: IOMEGA Model: ZIP 100 Rev: N*32
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 02
Detected scsi disk sda at scsi0, channel 0, id 6, lun 0
scsi : detected 1 SCSI disk total.
SCSI device sda: hdwr sector= 512 bytes. Sectors= 196608 [96 MB] [0.1 GB]
sda: Write Protect is off
Partition check: sda: sda1
This output came from a 1.3.87 system with a parallel ZIP drive. The exact output will vary depending on your host adapter and whether you have any other SCSI devices in your system.
The first line displays the initialization message from the low-level
driver for the host adapter, in this case PPA. Following that comes
the drive identification information returned by each device found on
the SCSI bus. Line 5 reports the device name assigned to the drive, in
this case /dev/sda. And the last line hows the result of the
partition check of the disk in the drive. This one has one
partition, /dev/sda1. These reports come from different modules
in the kernel. If you have more than one SCSI adapter, or several disks,
each section will contain more information.
If you are using a fresh disk, direct from Iomega, the partition check
should show one partition, /dev/sda4. If you have other SCSI devices
you will understand that the ZIP drive could appear on some other
device name like /dev/sdb - so check these messages.
If these lines do not appear, then something is misconfigured in your hardware or in the kernel. Check everything carefully before sending mail.
If the scsi0: line does not appear, then you have not configured your
host adapter and its driver correctly. Some drivers will give you a
hint about what is wrong. If your drive is not detected, you
probably have a cable problem. If a drive name is not assigned, you
probably forgot to include SCSI disk support when you built the
kernel.
Check the README files in drivers/scsi and the SCSI HOWTO for other
debugging hints.
Once you know the drive name for your ZIP drive, you are set. You can
manipulate the drive with the normal Linux disk management commands.
fdisk (or perhaps cfdisk) is used to manipulate the partition tables
on the disk. mke2fs can be used to format a partition with the ext2
filesystem - the one most commonly used in Linux. mount is used to
connect a formatted partition into your directory hierarchy.
You should study the manual pages for these tools if you are not
familiar with them. Be warned that there are now several quite
different versions of the fdisk program - be careful.
I'll describe two common scenarios.
If you have a ZIP disk with a DOS file structure that was originally
created by Iomega's tools, the partition scan should say that the disk
has one partition, /dev/sda4.
You should make a place to mount the disk, lets say /zip, and then
mount it as an MS-DOS filesystem:
mkdir /zip
mount -t vfat /dev/sda4 /zip
You could also use msdos instead of vfat. vfat supports long filenames where msdos does not. Now, the files on the disk should appear in /zip. While the disk is mounted, you will not be able to remove it. When you are finished with the disk you can umount it to release it and detach it from your directory hierarchy.
umount /zip
Once you've made the /zip mount point - you don't need to do it again, so you could come back later and mount something else there.
If you want to erase a ZIP disk and make a Linux native file system on it. You should use fdisk on the entire disk:
fdisk /dev/sda
and delete any existing partitions (with the d command). Then create
a new partition with the n command, make it primary partition number
1, use w to write the partition table to disk, and quit with
q.
Format the partition
mke2fs /dev/sda1
(The 1 is the number that you gave this partition in fdisk). Now you
can mount the disk:
mount -t ext2 /dev/sda1 /zip
(re-using that mount point we created before).
There is some extra work to be done if you want to use the disk that comes with the ZIP drive. As shipped, the software controlled write protection is enabled. Most people have unlocked the disk under DOS before ever trying to use it with Linux. Linux cannot access a locked disk, and it must be unlocked with Iomega's tools.
A native Linux program to manage the write protection feature, among other things, is expected to be available soon.