how swap cdrom/floppy drives in Linux?

lugoteehalt · 10-10-2005, 07:13 AM

Dell Inspiron 4000 laptop. The cdrom drive and the floppy drive go in the same bay at the front - you have to swap them over (sorry if stating the obvious). At present in Debian Sarge I switch off to make the change.

In Windows the ?'Softex bay manager' program may be used to allow the swap while Windows is running.

Is there a Debian equivalent? Looked in a table of equivalents but could find nothing.

Thanks any help.

Nd4Spd · 10-10-2005, 11:08 AM

I've been trying to do the same in SuSE 9.3 on a Inspiron 600m. Best I found was you have to have to write some script to kill the proc, swap the bay, then run another script to restart the bay. I did a google for something like "suse 9.3 laptop bay hot-swap" and "suse 9.3 laptop bay swap". Things were few & far between and I've yet to get it nailed down. Will post back if/when I do. I have a pretty quick startup so I just try to plan ahead for what I'll be needing to use.

lugoteehalt · 10-10-2005, 11:44 AM

Great thanks Nd4Spd.

Look forward to your postback!

Nd4Spd · 10-10-2005, 11:52 AM

Yeah, me too!

Nd4Spd · 10-11-2005, 09:17 AM

Well, to further this stuff, I've found a program that looks like it will do what we're looking for. I only have a bay with a CD-RW and a spare battery. I don't have a floppy drive. So that's where I'm coming from.

Anyway, here is a link to the program. I've yet to try it however. I'm missing a dependency. When I do I'll post my results.

http://timstadelmann.de/hotswap.html

lugoteehalt · 10-11-2005, 10:13 AM

Sterling work Nd4Spd!

Here's a *.deb package: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/hotswap.html

It has roughly the same name but appears much smaller.

I'm assuming that whatever happens swapping won't fry the hardware.

Mind boggles what would happen if hot swapped a desktop.

Nd4Spd · 10-11-2005, 10:42 AM

Hmm. Nice. I couldn't find an RPM for SuSE 9.3 Professional (what I'm using on this laptop).

I certainly hope it won't fry anything. The more i read about this the more i tend to think the kernel won't/doesn't support it and it is basically a crap shoot if it will work for you or not.

I found a couple threads on yahoo groups from a few years ago that address this. One guy running Slackware 8.1 said he could swap bays with CD & floppy while the system is running as long as the device was unmounted. I had slackware 10.1 on this for a while and I can tell you *that* didn't work for me (can we say system lock-up?)

Another said they were able to do it if they suspended the system to RAM, swapped the bay, then woke it up. Not sure how in the world that would make a difference, but I haven't been able to get that one working either.

This thread:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/linux-.../message/20571
mentions the following (again, I haven't tried this yet)

Code:

sync
umount /dev/hdN*
hdparm -U /dev/hdN
(remove old drive, put in new drive)
hdparm -R /dev/hdN
mount /dev/hdN*

The post is from 2003. After that post the person replys with

Quote:

Adding to my previous message, it appears I'm an idiot. This doesn't seem to work unless the channel is recognized on boot by the kernel... meaning you'd have to boot with the hard drive in in order to access it.

... onward through the fog ...

lugoteehalt · 10-12-2005, 10:12 AM

Tried to install the *.deb version but didn't have the dependencies which are very modern seemingly.

Have got hold of an older version http://packages.debian.org/stable/admin/hotswap-text and will try to install it. Then, with everything crossed, will try it. I'll post back about whether it works.

lugoteehalt · 10-14-2005, 10:32 AM

Program works well. But easy to shove in drive before you're supposed to. This doesn't seem to bugger anything; conclude laptop has been fry proofed in this regard. You have to umount the drive and be root.

Nd4Spd: don't know but if you need a rpm package how about 'alien'? Or does it only do rpm->deb?

From my point of view this is the perfect thread.

Nd4Spd · 10-18-2005, 05:13 PM

I would prefer an RPM but I could give something else a shot I guess. It's only time & money, right?

Or I could attempt to compile from source. I just haven't had time to give this a shot yet. I'm still interested in doing it. I usually run with my extra battery in the bay and only get the CD/DVD drive out when I need to use it, which is rarely. Just wondering how that'll work...

Thanks for the good news though.

lugoteehalt · 10-19-2005, 03:52 AM

It seems a very small program?? These are usually easy to compile from source?? You might as well try it from source code - it'll probably work.

Hotswap is only interested in IDE devices. You only need it to remove or put in an IDE device. The CD/DVD drive is presumably an IDE device and the program allows it to be put in or pulled out. The battery is just shoved in, or pulled out, without the need for the program (like the floppy drive, in my case).

Nd4Spd · 10-19-2005, 06:21 PM

Right-o on all the above. Never had an issue pulling out or putting in the battery. It's the IDE battery.
But the plan is to compile from source. I just need to to get around to it.

You know how it is.
I'll let you know how it goes. Hope to do it within a day or so and get this thread posted to a FIXED status.

Nd4Spd · 11-20-2005, 09:13 AM

Sorry about the time on the reply on this (over 45 days!). I finally got around to trying to install this and get it to work. It's complaining about dependencies, however I think I've got the dependencies all met (even though it says I don't). Any thoughts?

A ./configure will run and eventually exit with this:

Code:

checking for gethostbyname... yes
checking for connect... yes
checking for remove... yes
checking for shmat... yes
checking for IceConnectionNumber in -lICE... yes
checking for Motif... no
configure: error: This program requires Motif.
configure: error: /bin/sh './configure' failed for motif-frontend
flat4:/home/nd4spd/tmp/hotswap-0.4.0 #

I use SuSE so I'm also using YaST. YaST says I'm running
openmotif 2.2.3-11 i586
openmotif-libs 2.2.3-11 i586

The only other 'motif' entries are motv which is a tv viewing app that uses Motif for a better GUI and xmcd which is a motif cd player.

Any ideas?

Ruler2112 · 11-20-2005, 10:49 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by lugoteehalt
Mind boggles what would happen if hot swapped a desktop.

I've actually done this on a desktop with an IDE CD. Had an old PC where the CD-ROM would get confused and not read anything now and then. Power cycling the drive was the only way to unlock it. Well, I got frustrated from trying to do something else and the CD messed up again. Being very POed, I yanked the power and IDE connector out of the CD drive while slackware 10.0 was running, waited a few seconds, and reconnected them. I figured that it'd never work, but I was able to mount the drive without a hitch after that! Did it several more times that day (saved me from rebooting all the time) with no adverse effects that I was able to detect.

After doing this, I decided to try it with windoze. Yeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh...... Locked up windoze hard the first try.

Sorry if a bit OT.

Nd4Spd · 11-21-2005, 07:03 AM

Yea. Windows doesn't particularly like to play that way. I know I've done some stupid things in Linux that I was sure would hose the whole thing. But that's the mentality coming from a windows environment. Not to say I haven't done some stupid things..

If I could just get this hot swap bay thing figured out, this laptop setup would be golden. Wireless works, touchpad works exactly like I want it. Is sweet.