Subject: SGI320/Linux - Zip Drive and COM port.

From: "Len Smith" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 5 Jan 2000 14:25:07 -0500

I am attempting to deal with several issues with RH 6.0 Linux (2.2.10) on
the SGI Visual Workstation that I am unable to resolve.  I am sure that the
resolutions are quite simple, but I have tried the HOWTO route and asked
others without success.  Normally I am reluctant to seek help, opting to
work the problem out for myself, but I seem unable to do so in this case.

First, I recently installed an SGI supplied IOMEGA ZIP-100 into floppy bay
#2 on the VWS.  It installed easily and it works correctly under NT.  It is
recognized by Linux as "hdd" on the third probe during boot.  I am unable to
mount the device.  The HOWTOs reference SCSI drives (this is an IDE, I
believe) or parallel-attached devices.  So I can't find support assistance
for internal drives.  Do you have any guidance in this area?

Also, I am having difficulty accessing COM1 on the VWS.  I get an error on
"setserial -g /dev/ttys0" or "/dev/cua0" under root.  Both devices are
present and seem to be correct.  The port works correctly under NT.  If I
try "setserial auto_irq skip_test autoconfig" I receive a "device not found"
error.  If you have guidance here I would be grateful as well.

I thank your for your time.

Regards,

Len Smith
[email-masked]

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From: Avi Bercovich <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 5 Jan 2000 21:56:22 +0100 (MET)

Hi Len,

With regard to your ZIP trouble, you might want to try and mounting a
_partition_ on the zip drive, not the whole drive itself...

If the zip is formatted with winXX you might want to try the following as
root:

mount -t vfat /dev/hdd4 /mnt

this will mount the vfat formatted partition nr 4 on the currently loaded
zip-disk on the /mnt directory entry. For some reason, winXX formatted
disks are set to partition 4.

hope this helps,

avi bercovich

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Avi Bercovich                                      [email-masked]
Sinjeur Semeynsstraat 9          Dept. of Social Science Informatics (SWI)
1183LD Amstelveen                                  University of Amsterdam

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From: "Len Smith" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2000 06:43:52 -0500

I'd like to thank all of you for your support, especially David Cantrell
(who is at home).

The solution was pretty apparent; I just didn't take advantage of it.  The
SGI320 VWS has proprietary hardware and while the base Red Hat 6.0 will work
with the kernel obtained from the SGI Linux (www.linux.sgi.com) site it also
requires that the 2.2.5-xx source be patched and rebuilt.  The patch
corrects issues with the sound, COM ports and if you enable it SCSI
emulation for the internal IDE ZIP Drive.  So, I:

1. Downloaded the 2.2.10 tarball
2. Downloaded the VWS patch from the SGI Linux Intel site
3. Created duplicate directories under /usr/src named linux.2210 and
linux.2210.vw, both containing exact copies of 2.2.10.
4. Ran the patch "patch -p0 < visws_2210_28jul99.patch from /usr/src
5. Visually verified that the directory linux.2210 was updated (look at what
the patch does, then look for the changes)
6. make dep
7. make clean
8. make menuconfig (or whatever config your prefer)
9. Be sure to use at least the settings from the SGI site for the kernel -
otherwise danger lurks
10. Make sure the SGI Sound is on
11. SCSI emulation
12. make vmlinux (that's right, not zImage)
13. make modules
14. make modules_install
15. ln -s /usr/src/linux.2210 /usr/src/linux
16. ln -s /usr/src/linux.2210/System.map /boot/System.map
17. Copy the vmlinux image to your SGI FAT boot partition.
18. Make a new boot selection to point to the new kernel.
19. Boot and Enjoy.

The corrected the COM issue and the SCSI emulation found the ZIP as hdd4 and
everything works okay! Thanks again for everyone's help.

-----Original Message-----
From: Len Smith [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: Wednesday, January 05, 2000 2:25 PM
To: [email-masked]
Subject: SGI320/Linux - Zip Drive and COM port.

Regards,

Len Smith
[email-masked]