No device nodes for ATA floppy (ZIP drive)

[Gerry Tool]

I have an internal zip drive connected as hdb. On other Linux systems,
I access it with an entry in fstab for /dev/hdb4. This drive is not
showing up in ubuntu Device Manager, so when I try to mount it I get an
error "mount: special device /dev/hdb4 does not exist". My fstab entry
is
/dev/hdb4 /mnt/zip auto rw,user,noauto 0 0

These are the hdx devices in /dev

root@gstpc-ubuntu:/home/gerry # ls /dev/h*
/dev/hda /dev/hda11 /dev/hda4 /dev/hda7 /dev/hdc /dev/hde1 /dev/hde5
/dev/hda1 /dev/hda2 /dev/hda5 /dev/hda8 /dev/hdd /dev/hde2
/dev/hda10 /dev/hda3 /dev/hda6 /dev/hda9 /dev/hde /dev/hde3

Notice there is no /dev/hdb, even though the zip is attached as slave on the
first IDE controller. It shows up fine in Fedora Core 1,2,3, Suse 9.1.

[Gerry Tool (gst-theclearing)]

A mailing list member led me to a remedy for this problem. He suggested I add
lines to /etc/udev/links.conf to make the two special devices hdb and hdb4. The
lines I added were

M hdb b 3 64
M hdb4 b 3 67

These create the special device files on boot and I am now able to mount and use
the zip disk.

However, I think something in the initial install/configuration should have
caused these files to exist without this addition to links.conf.

[Matt Zimmerman (mdz)]

Please attach the output from the "dmesg" command.

[John P. Richardson (paul-reverendlinux)]

Created an attachment (id=916)
Output of dmesg

I'm also having this problem. Although the device is seen at boot (per the
output from dmesg), no mount attempts have been successful. I have tried
adding the lines to /etc/udev/links.conf as stated in comment #1 but this had
no effect.

Per the request in comment #2, I am adding the output of my dmesg here.

[John P. Richardson (paul-reverendlinux)]

Um...is anyone actually working this or should we just wait for the next release
and hope for the best?

[Matt Zimmerman (mdz)]

(In reply to comment #4)
> Um...is anyone actually working this or should we just wait for the next release
> and hope for the best?

Since you didn't provide any details about how it failed, we can't guess what
your problem is, but it sounds like it may be different from the one originally
reported in this bug. I suggest that you contact one of the forums or mailing
lists and ask for help diagnosing the problem, and report your problem here if
you discover that it is a bug. Perhaps your drive is not /dev/hdb, in which
case you need to use a different name.

Regarding the original problem in this bug report, it seems that perhapl the ATA
floppy driver isn't sending the necessary hotplug events to arrange for its
device nodes to be created

[John P. Richardson (paul-reverendlinux)]

First, let me clarify. I am having the EXACT same problem as Mr. Tool.
However, the fix action that worked for him did not work for me. It was my hope
that my input would help solve the problem faster. Per your request (comment
#2), I added my dmesg. You are correct, my zip is actually hdd. In trying the
fix action stated in comment #1, I used the proper device name for my particular
setup. As stated, no fix. Instead, I get the standard "not a block device"
error when attempting to mount it. I know the drive is good because I backed up
data to it before replacing RH8 with Ubuntu.

[Matt Zimmerman (mdz)]

(In reply to comment #6)
(In reply to comment #6)
> You are correct, my zip is actually hdd. In trying the
> fix action stated in comment #1, I used the proper device name for my particular
> setup.

But you didn't update the device numbers accordingly. If you simply replaced
hdb with hdd, then you created a /dev/hdd which actually corresponded to a
(nonexistent) hdb device. Anyway, a much simpler (and more robust) fix would be
to add "ide-floppy" to /etc/modules. Now that I look again, the bug is likely
that the module isn't being loaded, and as such it's a duplicate of bug #8509.

This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 8509.