Removeable media

[turnbull@example.com (Stephen J. Turnbull)]

>>>>> "Alberto" == A Tomita,Jr <Alberto@example.com> writes:

    >> From: TMatsumu@example.com Date: 30 May 96 12:17:00 EDT
    >> I'm aware of the Jazz, be careful with media, many reports on
    >> comp.periphs.scsi have problems with the media.  Shouldn't need
    >> extra drivers, except for removable media, can linux support MO
    >> drives?  If so, should support Jazz.

    Alberto> Yes, Linux supports removable media, so Syquest, MO, Zip
    Alberto> and Jazz, they all can be used. Newer kernels also
    Alberto> support the parallel port version of Zip.

Linux supports removable media, but not very well in my experience.
My Toshiba 230MB MO drive in particular.  Problems: (1) mke2fs bombs
on pre 1.3.76 versions.  (2) ext2 fs did not detect out of space on 'cp
-R' to the MO drive, leaving a directory full of illegal entries.  I
think these are related and fixed in 1.3.76 and above, but I haven't
used it much, in particular I'm mostly reading preformatted media.
(3) Still (pre2.0.2) does not detect changes properly; media change
gets logged to syslog but directory cache does not get flushed.

I have not tried other FSes, except to read MS-DOS MO disks.  So maybe 
it's ext2 specific, and minix or MS-DOG file systems would work fine.

-- 
                           Stephen John Turnbull
University of Tsukuba                                        Yaseppochi-Gumi
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences  http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp/
Tennodai 1-1-1, Tsukuba, 305 JAPAN                 turnbull@example.com