jaZip for Linux FAQ

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General Questions

  1. Does jaZip work for any other UNIX platform?
  2. What drives/interfaces does jaZip support?
  3. How do I get my ATAPI drive to work with jaZip?
  4. I get gibberish in my browser when I try to download. Your site is broken!
  5. How do I get my parallel Zip drive working with Linux?

Installation/Usage Questions

  1. When I run the binary that I downloaded, I get "jazip: can't resolve symbol 'snprintf'" Huh?
  2. Why do I have to have a disk in the drive to start jaZip?
  3. I get errors involving the declaration of MS_NOSUID and MS_RDONLY when I try to compile.
  4. jaZip always removes the mountpoint when it unmounts a disk. I don't like this behavior. How can I fix this?
  5. When I try to use jaZip to unwriteprotect the Tools disk that came with my drive , I get prompted for a password. What do I do?
  6. When I try to compile jaZip under RedHat 4.1, I get errors like:
    /usr/include/forms.h:890: X11/Xlib.h: No such file or directory
    It used to work before I upgraded, what is wrong?

Answers to General Questions

Does jaZip work for any other UNIX platform?

No. jaZip is only supported for Linux. Too many features of jaZip are Operating System dependent for me to support it for other UNIX machines.

What drives/interfaces does jaZip support?

jaZip supports the Iomega Zip drive with parallel or SCSI interfaces. I don't know about the Zip-plus version or the USB version (someone please tell me!). If you have an ATAPI drive, and you've compiled in IDE->SCSI translation (also known as SCSI emulation or CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDESCSI), then jaZip will work. See the next question for details. The SCSI Jaz drive is supported in both the 1G and 2G capacities. The Zip drive is supported in both the 100 and 250 MB capacities with jaZip 0.32, although I have not tested the 250 MB support. Let me know if you have problems. It does not support the much older IDE (non-ATAPI) interface drives. It does not support Syquest drives.

How do I get my ATAPI drive to work with jaZip?

You need to set up SCSI emulation for ATAPI devices. This requires recompiling your kernel, or loading/unloading certain kernel modules. Specifically, you need to turn on kernel support for "SCSI emulation", "SCSI Support", and "SCSI Generic Support". You also need to turn off "IDE/ATAPI Floppy Support", because according to the kernel documentation, if both "SCSI emulation" and "IDE/ATAPI Floppy Support" are turned on, the native support will be used instead of the SCSI emulation.

I get gibberish in my browser when I try to download.

If you are trying to download one of the files here and can't get anything except garbage displaying on your browser, it is because your browser doesn't know what to do with this format (for example, .tgz and .rpm formats). If your browser is Netscape, you can force it to download the file instead of viewing it by holding down the shift key when you click the link to the file.

How do I get my parallel Zip drive working with Linux?

The parallel Zip driver has been part of the kernel distribution since sometime in the 1.3.x series. The driver configures the parallel Zip drive as a SCSI device. To enable this feature, you will need to recompile your kernel. During the configuration step, answer yes to SCSI support, SCSI disk support, and IOMEGA Parallel Port Zip drive SCSI support.

Answers to Installation/Usage Questions

When I run the binary that I downloaded, I get " jazip: can't resolve symbol 'snprintf' " Huh?

This is a general problem with X that crops up from time to time. I do not thoroughly understand it, but from reading USENET posts, it seems that the problem has something to do with the version of libc that your X distribution was compiled with vs. the version on the system that the afflicted binary was compiled on.

The solution for jaZip is simply to compile your own binary. Download this copy of the glibc xforms distribution or get the regular xforms distribution as well as the source distribution of jaZip. Install the xforms library (this will copy a library and header file to the appropriate places on your system), and then untar the jaZip source and build and install it as described in the README file included therein. This binary should be compatible with your system.

Why do I have to have a disk in the drive to start jaZip?

For security reasons, jaZip always checks to see that the device that it is operating on is an Iomega Zip or Jaz drive. In order to do this, it needs to read from the drive. This requires that there be a disk inserted. This problem should be solved in a future version of jaZip.

I get errors involving the declaration of MS_NOSUID and MS_RDONLY when I try to compile.

The problem stems from the fact that on some distributions, the include files for handing filesystems are different than others. Make sure you have the kernel include files installed, and then download the jaZip source again. In order to fix this, I made a minor change to jaZip 0.30 without changing the version number.

jaZip always removes the mountpoint when it unmounts a disk. I don't like this behavior. How can I fix this?

Get the latest version of jaZip. This feature has been removed.

When I try to use jaZip to unwriteprotect the Tools disk that came with my drive, I get prompted for a password. What do I do?

My original (incorrect) response to this was that this disk is not simply password write protected because there are actually two filesystems on it: one for a Macintosh install and one for a DOS/Win install. Since my making this statement, I've heard various rumors that there is in fact a password that will unlock the tools disk.

jaZip user Karl F. Lutzen (kfl@umr.edu) verified that this is the case. He searched through the reclaim.exe files in the DOSSTUFF and W95STUFF directories (not the one in the root directory!) of a jaz tools disk and found the string "APlaceForYourStuff". According to Karl, using this as the password unlocks an unreclaimed jaz tools disk. I have no idea what state the filesystem is left in after unlocking the disk in this way, but at least it apparently removes the write protection status so that you can go ahead and repartition and format the disk.

When I try to compile jaZip under RedHat 4.1, I get errors like:
/usr/include/forms.h:890: X11/Xlib.h: No such file or directory
It used to work before I upgraded, what is wrong?

RedHat forgot to put a link from /usr/X11R6/include/X11 to /usr/include/X11 in version 4.1 of their software. This is where XForms (and lots of other programs) looks for the Xlib include files. The files XForms needs (and therefore jaZip needs, too) are in /usr/X11R6/include/X11. Become root and type:

ln -s /usr/X11R6/include/X11 /usr/include

You should now be able to compile jaZip.

Iomega®, Jaz®, Zip®, and the logo are registered trademarks of the Iomega® corporation which does not endorse nor sponsor this site or the software distributed here.

Comments? Email:

jsmith@scripps.edu

Last updated on 08/28/00