[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

udev+zip utter hack



Since I installed udev and hotplug a while back, the zip drive on my
laptop has not worked.  Eventually I made the connection: udev was not
creating /dev/hdb4.  Googling produced little beyond the unhelpful
response closing Bug #260349.  I quote:

> I have a zip drive that shows up as /dev/hdb. Zip drives are usually
> partitioned to have only /dev/hdb4 as a fat partition. udev doesn't
> create this device, so I can't mount my zip drive.
It does, please RTFM.

The problem is that the FM is nigh-unintelligible.  So after spending
quite a few hours pouring over it, I hacked my way to a solution:
after udev does its magic with /dev, the old devices exist in /.dev.
So I added that old-fashioned "." to the relevant line in /etc/fstab,
thus:

/.dev/hdb4      /zip            auto    rw,user,noauto  0       0

In consequence, "mount /zip" works as it used to, and /var/log/syslog
reports as follows:

Oct 28 20:47:01 localhost udev[5748]: removing device node '/dev/hdb4'
Oct 28 20:47:01 localhost udev[5757]: creating device node '/dev/hdb4'
Oct 28 20:47:01 localhost kernel:  /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0: p4

My question is, what's a better ("the Debian") way?



Reply to: