Re: autoloading of ppa module
On Mon, 28 Jun 1999, Andreas Tille wrote:
> Hello,
>
> sometime ago I reported trouble in autoloading the ppa module when
> mounting an Iomega Zip drive. This problems vanished as I reported.
>
> Now I have a new problem in correlation with a scanner device. There
> are two cases which cause trouble:
> 1) The SCSI-card (BusLogic BT-930) of the scanner is compiled in
> as module and the module is loaded *before* the Zip drive
> was mounted (i.e. the ppa module was loaded)
> 2) The SCSI-card driver was compiled into the kernel with 'Y'.
> In both cases I have to do `modprobe ppa` manually to mount the
> Zip drive. Is there any workaround for this case?
>
A year ago answer definitely was "no". Autoloading with
alias scsihostadapter ppa
does work only if Zip drive is only SCSI device in system
So, I use following setup
1. keep Zip-drive turned on while machine is turrned on. I simply power
it from the main power supply to avoid trouble with portable power supply
overheating.
2. put ppa into /etc/modules. It would load if there is no disk in drive
and would survive disconnecting and reconnecting of Zip=drive in case if
you need to take it somewhere (that is why you bought parallel Zip, isn't
it). It also wouldn't interfere with printer operations on the same port
provided that your kernel is 2.2.x or you have installed parport patch
on 2.0.x kernel. So, there is no reason to not keep it loaded. But
there is a good reason to not compile it into kernel.
3. If your machine reboots when you are away with zip drive, it fails to
load ppa, becouse there is no Zip drive here. So, when you come back,
you'll have to type modprobe ppa. In my opinion such unusiall situation
deserves a bit of attention. How often your machine reboots? I consider
it a trouble if it does so more often than once a month. How often it does
so when you (and your Zipp-drive) is not here? Even less often.
But in some recent posting I've seen another solution concerning parallel
IDE drive:
alias block-major-3 driver.
If your have no other SCSI drives, only scanners and such,
alias block-major-8 ppa
might help.
> Kind regards
Or, if you zip is second SCSI drive, may be
alias block-major-8-16 ppa
would help. (May be 8-20, becouse you are asking for sdb4)
>
> Andreas.
>
>
>
>
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Victor Wagner vitus@ice.ru
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Institute for Commerce Home: 7-(095)-135-46-61
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