USB ZIP drive "not a block device" error

[Stefan Bruda]

At 09:09 +1200 on 2002-10-2 Bernard mentink wrote:
 >
 > Yes, block-major-2 is not there.

In fact, block-major-2 deals with floppy disks (sic!), so the best
guess I have (I have never actually used Zip drives, USB or not) is
that the Zip drive is actually made available as a floppy to the
system by the USB driver (just as, say, USB cameras are viewed as SCSI
disks).  The log looks consistent to this.  Indeed, the lines

 > >>Sep 30 16:54:13 localhost /etc/hotplug/usb.agent: missing kernel or user
 > >>mode driver usb-storage
 > >>Sep 30 16:54:13 localhost modprobe: modprobe: Can't locate module
 > >>block-major-2

might mean that the USB interface (fails to) create the "floppy" from
your drive, and then the kernel tries to handle the resulting floppy.
At this point, the kernel discovers that the floppy support has not
been compiled in (then tries to load the corresponding module--you
guessed its name, block-major-2--and fails in this pursuit as well,
hence the complaint about the missing block-major-2 module).

If my wild guess is correct, you should first investigate the
existence of the USB mass storage support (solving the missing
usb-storage module complaint) in the kernel.  This is done by setting
CONFIG_USB_STORAGE ("USB mass storage support" under "USB support" in
make menucongig or make xconfig) while configuring your kernel.  Set
this to Y or M as you wish.  Who knows, this might even eliminate the
complain related to the floppy driver.

This might or might not solve the problem.  Since you have usb-storage
already, it may be that you need a specific driver for your Zip drive,
case in which I have no idea what to do (maybe check the section
"Device support" on http://www.linux-usb.org/).  It looks a bit
strange to me to make a Zip drive available as a floppy--I would have
expected a SCSI disk instead or something but what do I know.

Once the USB issue has been solved, and if you still get complaints
about missing floppy support (i.e., block-major-2), you should compile
such support into the kernel (or as a module if so you wish), that is,
configure CONFIG_BLK_DEV_FD accordingly.  When using make menuconfig
or make xconfig the option is called "Normal floppy disk support" and
is under "Block devices."  I am not sure whether you have to include
anything else (I have no floppy drive so I have not configured this
option).

In fact, you can try the floppy thing first, and see whether this does
not in fact solve the whole problem (I somehow doubt it but who
knows).

 > >>I get the error message "not a block device"

This error is meaningless: all it says is that there is no device
attached to the /dev entry, and thus the entry does not correspond to
anything, including block devices (if you were to try to access it as
a character device you would get a "not a character device" error).

All of this is again just a guess, but I certainly hope it helps.

Stefan

-- 
If it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as
it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.
    --Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass