The Iomega Jaz drive is a removable-media disk drive whose disks have a capacity of 1 or 2 Gigabytes. Unlike the Zip drive, the Jaz is only available as a SCSI device (internal or external), so a SCSI interface card and driver are required to use these drives.
Much of this HOWTO evolved from what was created by the previous author, Bob Willmot, (who can now be reached at bob@willmot.com), who maintained the HOWTO through version 1.6, with contributions and information from the following people:
The latest version of this document can be found on my homepage http://www.ultranet.com/~hsd/HOWTO/ where you will find the HTML version, suitable for browsing, a PostScript version, suitable for printing, and the SGML source. Other versions may be found in different formats at the LDP homepage http://www.linuxdoc.org/.
v1.8, 12 January 2000
v1.7, 18 November 1999
If you have any comments/suggestions/corrections please send them to: Herb DaSilva at Home or (if you must have fast response) at Work.
Copyright © 2000,1999 Herbert S. DaSilva
This manual may be reproduced in whole or in part, without fee, subject to the following restrictions:
Exceptions to these rules may be granted for academic purposes: Write to the author and ask. These restrictions are here to protect us as authors, not to restrict you as learners and educators. All source code in this document is placed under the GNU General Public License, available via anonymous FTP from the GNU archive site.
Thanks to Stephan Burlot, stephan.burlot@edicom.ch, for pointing out the error (or lack of clarity) in the 2Gb patch to jaztool that was fixed in version 1.8.
My thanks go out to Mark F. Komarinski for his "HOWTO-HOWTO" - This LDP author was helped Mark, you did your job. ;-)
Jaz drives are SCSI devices and are available as an external drive with a 50-pin SCSI-2 self-terminating interface or an internal 3-1/2 format drive with a 50-pin header interface.
Both the internal and external devices are available in either 1 or 2 Gigabyte capacity, so there are four different Jaz drives available.
Jaz disks are a cartridge-style removable media containing a stack of three 3.5" platters. From here out, I'll be using the terms "cartridge" and "disk" interchangeably to mean the Jaz media.
The 1Gb and 2Gb cartridges appear similar, but there is actually a subtle difference in their shape which prevents a 2Gb cartridge from being fully inserted into a 1Gb drive. Obviously, this means that you can't use a 2Gb cartridge in a 1Gb drive.
The 2-Gb capacity Jaz drives can read, write, and format both 2-Gb and 1-Gb Jaz cartridges.
Iomega markets a SCSI host adapter under the name Jaz Jet. However, there are at least two different SCSI chipsets that are used. For this reason, the Jaz Jet isn't necessarily the best SCSI adapter to buy if you need one for your Jaz drive. You're better off getting a card that you know your Linux distribution will support (see the next section).
One of the Jaz Jet cards is based on the Adaptec 7800 family of adapters. Linux 2.0 supports this adapter with the aic7xxx driver. This driver is built into most of the standard 2.x SCSI-capable kernels supplied with most Linux distributions.
The other adapter is based on the Advanced Systems chipset. At boot time the board gives a message like:
Jaz Jet PCI SCSI adapter Copyright Advanced Systems 1996
Depending on your Linux distribution, you may need to build a custom kernel (with the CONFIG_SCSI_ADVANSYS variable set) to use this adapter.
Personally, I don't like surprises, so if I were going to buy an adapter card, I would get a name-brand card with a 50-pin connector, so that I knew that what I was getting was supported.
If you're using an Ultra-Wide SCSI card with a 68-pin connector, you'll need to get an adapter or another cable. The adapters do indeed work just fine with the Jaz drive, but can be rather pricey, so if you're buying a SCSI card primarily for the purpose of connecting the Jaz drive, you're better off picking up a card with a 50pin connector on it.
If you're looking for a suggestion, I like the Adaptec AHA-2930U - it's cheap, it's fast, and the Jaz drive just plugs right in using the supplied cable with no adapter hassles. Unfortunately, support for this card is fairly new, so unless you have a fairly new Linux distribution (2.2.x kernel), it probably isn't supported. There are patches to the aic7xxx driver for 2.0.36 kernels that support this card, however. The AHA-2940U is an excellent choice as well, and it has been supported for a lot longer, it's just more expensive.
As always, be sure that your Linux distribution supports a particular card EXPLICITLY before making a purchase. Many manufacturers, like Adaptec, have cards with numbers and letters similar to each other that are actually completely different chipsets, and therefore use completely different drivers.
Configuring the Linux kernel for a SCSI card is the subject of a complete document in itself, so I won't go into that here.
Info on rebuilding the kernel should be found in /usr/src/linux/README, or in /usr/src/linux/Documentation/ directory for the 2.x kernels. If these files don't exist, make sure that you have installed the kernel package source for your distribution.
You can also check out
With a SCSI controller installed, when the machine is powered up or reset the SCSI controller will scan the SCSI bus looking for attached devices before booting the operating system.
If your SCSI card is correctly installed, and your Jaz drive is attached and powered on, you should see the drive listed as something like "Iomega Jaz 1GB" or "Iomega Jaz 2GB" during this time.
If the drive doesn't show up, there's no sense booting Linux. Power down the PC and Jaz drive, and check everything again. In particular, unplug the cables and make sure none of the the pins are bent, then replug them and ensure they are completely seated against the connector. If you have multiple SCSI devices, make sure they all have different ID numbers, and that the last device in the SCSI chain is terminated.
When the drive shows up in the power-on test, you're half way home.
When Linux boots the SCSI driver should display information about your SCSI adapter and what devices are attached to the SCSI bus.
Boot messages will vary depending on your driver and adapter, and are logged
to the /var/log/messages (or /var/adm/messages) file as well as appearing on
the screen during boot. You can also 'replay' the messages since your last
boot from the command prompt with the dmesg command.
Here's the kernel booting output from a 2.0.36 kernel with an Adaptec 2940 controller (using the aic7xxx driver):
(scsi0) <Adaptec AHA-2940A Ultra SCSI host adapter> found at PCI 14/0
(scsi0) Narrow Channel, SCSI ID=7, 3/255 SCBs
(scsi0) Warning - detected auto-termination
(scsi0) Please verify driver detected settings are correct.
(scsi0) If not, then please properly set the device termination
(scsi0) in the Adaptec SCSI BIOS by hitting CTRL-A when prompted
(scsi0) during machine bootup.
(scsi0) Cables present (Int-50 NO, Ext-50 YES)
(scsi0) Downloading sequencer code... 419 instructions downloaded
scsi0 : Adaptec AHA274x/284x/294x (EISA/VLB/PCI-Fast SCSI) 5.1.2/3.2.4
<Adaptec AHA-2940A Ultra SCSI host adapter>
scsi : 1 host.
Vendor: iomega Model: jaz 2GB Rev: E.17
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 02
Detected scsi removable disk sda at scsi0, channel 0, id 4, lun 0
scsi : detected 1 SCSI disks total.
(scsi0:0:4:0) Synchronous at 10.0 Mbyte/sec, offset 15.
sda : READ CAPACITY failed.
sda : status = 1, message = 00, host = 0, driver = 28
sda : extended sense code = 2
sda : block size assumed to be 512 bytes, disk size 1GB.
If something resembling these lines doesn't appear, then your kernel is probably not configured correctly (or you picked the wrong pre-built kernel).
If the "scsi0 :" line does not appear, then you have not configured your driver correctly. Some drivers will give you a hint about what is wrong. If a drive name is not assigned, you probably forgot to include SCSI disk support when you built the kernel.
Note the READ CAPACITY failed. Most SCSI drivers (like this one)
will detect that the drive is a removable media type, and not get all
flustered when it can't read the partition table. However, some SCSI cards
aren't as graceful. If your PC hangs during boot, try booting with
a cartridge in the drive.
Check the README files in /usr/src/linux/drivers/scsi and the Kernel HOWTO for other debugging hints.
In the log output in the previous section note the raw SCSI device name, which in this case is "sda", the full name being /dev/sda. If the Jaz drive is the only SCSI disk on your system, it will typically be /dev/sda. If your primary hard drive is SCSI, or you have a SCSI CD-ROM drive, it could be sdb, sdc, etc.
Whatever the drive name is, you will need this name to access the drive, as explained in later sections.
Jaz disks come pre-formatted from Iomega with a single partition using the DOS FAT16 file system. The single partition is usually the 4th disk partition (for Mac compatibility - the Mac requires data to be on the 4th partition, but the PC doesn't care which partition data is on).
Linux is perfectly happy reading and writing a FAT16 file system, so you
can use the disk as is. In order to use the disk, you need to mount it, so
the first thing you need to do is create a mount point. For this document,
we'll mount all our DOS Jaz drives under /dos_jaz, so let's create
that mount point (you'll need to be root for most of this stuff). You'll
only need to do this once:
mkdir /dos_jaz
In a previous section, I mentioned you'd need to remember the Jaz drive's
raw SCSI device name. You need that now. If your drive is
/dev/sda then all these examples will work for you. If not, you'll
need to replace "sda" with the device ID of your Jaz drive. Since you need
to issue these commands as root, you'll want to be sure you have the correct
names.
If you have a 2.0 kernel, or have added VFAT support, you can mount the Jaz disk this way, and have long filenames under FAT16:
mount -t vfat /dev/sda4 /dos_jaz
Note that although VFAT allows you to use long filenames, those filenames are still case in-sensitive, and although 'ls' lists permissions, you can't actually change permissions on any of the files.
If the "vfat" format is not recognized by the mount command, then you'll use this command to mount the Jaz disk:
mount -t msdos /dev/sda4 /dos_jaz
Once you have issued either of the mount commands, files from the disk
will appear under the /dos_jaz directory. While the disk is
mounted, you will not be able to eject it.
When you are done with the disk, you can unmount it with the command:
umount /dos_jaz
Once unmounted, you can press the button on the front of the drive to eject the cartridge.
Since a Jaz disk is simply a disk, it can be repartitioned and reformatted like a fixed disk. If this is done, you need to know which partition numbers were used during repartitioning to be able to mount the disk.
For instance, if the partition table was wiped, and a single new partition was created as the first partition, the two mount commands from the previous section would be:
mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /dos_jaz
and
mount -t msdos /dev/sda1 /dos_jaz
Linux-Native Jaz disks allow files to be stored with standard Unix permissions and case-sensitive filenames. The only drawback to Linux-Native disks is that they can no longer be used on DOS/Windows machines.
A Jaz disk looks the same as a hard drive to Linux, so for those of you familiar with the Linux disk management tools, none of the following will be a surprise.
If you want to erase a Jaz disk and make a Linux native file system on it, you use fdisk on the entire disk. Please be very careful using fdisk, especially if you have a SCSI hard drive - we wouldn't want to have any "accidents". :-) In particular, make sure you are operating on the correct device before making changes. In most cases, you'll use:
fdisk /dev/sda
and delete the existing partitions (with the d command). Then create a new partition with the n command, make it primary partition number 1 (using all the cylinders), use w to write the partition table to disk, and quit with q.
Once the partition has been created, format it with:
mke2fs /dev/sda1
(The 1 is the number that you gave this partition in fdisk). I prefer to
create a separate mount point for Linux native Jaz disks, and you'll see why
a little later when we talk about the fstab. So let's create that
mount point now, and then mount the disk:
mkdir /jaz
mount -t ext2 /dev/sda1 /jaz
As usual, when the Jaz disk is mounted, it cannot be ejected. When you're done using the Jaz disk, you unmount it with:
umount /jaz
Once unmounted, you can press the button on the front of the drive to eject the cartridge.
Like your other disk drives, once a Linux Jaz disk has been mounted and unmounted a certain number of times, the system will mark the disk as "dirty". When this happens, you'll get a message like:
Mounting unchecked filesystem, /dev/sda1. Recommend running e2fsck.
Once you see this message, it's a good idea to go ahead and check the disk. The disk must be unmounted in order to check it. Unfortunately, you only get the "dirty" message when you mount it, so you can either check the disk when you're done using it, or unmount it, check it, then re-mount it. Use the following command to check the disk (assuming the partition to be checked is the first one):
e2fsck /dev/sda1
Up to now, we've had to be root to mount and unmount the Jaz disks, and
we've had to type quite a bit to mount the Jaz disks. By adding a couple of
entries to the file /etc/fstab, we can make using the Jaz drive
much easier.
If you've got preformatted DOS disks, and you've created the
/dos_jaz mount point, you can add this line to the file
/etc/fstab:
/dev/sda4 /dos_jaz vfat defaults,user,nosuid,noauto 0 0
With this line in the fstab, any user can mount and unmount a DOS-format Jaz cartridge with the following commands:
mount /dos_jaz
umount /dos_jaz
This is because we have told Linux what the Jaz device ID and media type
are in the fstab, plus we have given the user option to
allow any user to mount and unmount the disk. Naturally, if your Jaz drive
is other than sda, you'll need to change that, and this won't work
for DOS cartridges that have been repartitioned without another entry in
the fstab that uses a separate mount point (e.g. /dos_jaz2).
If you've got Linux formatted disks, and you've created the
/jaz mount point, you can add this line to the fstab:
/dev/sda1 /jaz ext2 defaults,user,exec,nosuid,noauto 0 0
With this line in the fstab, any user can mount and unmount a Linux-format Jaz cartridge with the following commands:
mount /jaz
umount /jaz
Once again, we have told Linux what the Jaz device ID and media type are
in the fstab, plus we have given the user option to allow
any user to mount and unmount the disk. Some system administrators may not
wish to have the exec option present, as there are some security
risks with letting any user run an executable of unknown origin from the
drive, but with the nosuid option present, these risks are
minimal.
Both of the fstab examples above have the option noauto
in them to prevent the disk from being automatically mounted at boot time.
In general, this is a good idea because if there is no disk in the drive
when the computer boots, or the drive is powered off, it can cause varying
amounts of trouble, depending on which SCSI driver you are using.
If you're sure you want to mount the jaz drive at boot time,
simply remove the noauto option, and make sure the drive is on,
and a cartridge is inserted before booting. Note that you can only have
one fstab entry for jaz drive that will auto-mount, or you may encounter
the same problems as if there was no cartridge in the drive.
With some Jaz drives, the software to run the drive is supplied on a Jaz cartridge instead of on CD-ROM. The "problem" with these disks is that software-controlled write protection is enabled on the disk, so that the user can't wipe the disk until after the tools are installed at least once.
There are several ways you can reclaim the Jaz tools disk:
If you have access to one of the password protection removal programs, all you need is the password that Iomega uses, and it is:
APlaceForYourStuff
Note that capitalization is important.
jaztool is a Linux utility written by Bob Willmot to support some of the Jaz drive's features (including software controlled ejection and write protection). I like jaztool because its commands can be embedded in alias commands and scripts. It's also easy to compile and install.
The original source code for jaztool can be found at http://www.willmot.com/jaztool/ and is also mirrored at my site at http://www.ultranet.com/~hsd/HOWTO/index.shtml#jaztool
Note that to use jaztool with a 2Gb Jaz drive, you must change ONE line of code. Change line 188 from this:
return(!strncasecmp(id,"IOMEGA JAZ 1GB",15));
to this:
return(!strncasecmp(id,"IOMEGA JAZ",11));
NOTE: There are two spaces between IOMEGA and JAZ in the previous two lines of code. SGML (or maybe just HTML) apparently removes the extra whitespace.
After building jaztool and installing it, it must be suid root, or run as root, or it won't work.
I use jaztool regularly, so if you have a question about it, I would be happy to try and answer it.
Use the following command to eject a cartridge:
jaztool /dev/sda eject
This might seem like a lot to type, but it's easy to make a slick alias like this:
alias jazej 'umount /jaz; jaztool /dev/sda eject'
There are two password protection modes on a Jaz, and both are controlled through software. One is Write Protected and the other is Read/Write Protected. jaztool will allow you to unlock a Write Protected disk, but under Linux, a device that cannot be read cannot be mounted, so Read/Write Protected is not supported.
If the cartridge is Write Protected (such as a Jaz Tools disk), use the following command to unlock it (the disk must not be mounted):
jaztool /dev/sda rw
jaztool prompts for a password, and if the password is correct, the disk is unlocked and ejected. This must be done to cause the SCSI driver to pick up the new mode when the cartridge is re-inserted.
To make the disk Write Protected again, use the following command:
jaztool /dev/sda ro
jaztool again prompts for a password, and the disk is locked and ejected.
Note that jaztool doesn't support the "Unprotect until Eject" feature found in the Windows world. If you remove the password protection, it is removed until you put it back on.
If you'd prefer a nice, slick, graphical user interface to control your Jaz (and Zip!) drive, there's the jaZip tool. Check it out at: http://www.scripps.edu/~jsmith/jazip/
I haven't used jaZip myself, so please contact the author directly with questions on jaZip. Contact information is on the website listed above.
If the Jaz drive co-exists with other SCSI harddrives, most BIOSes will want to boot the disk that has the lowest SCSI Id. The Jaz drive can be set to SCSI Ids 0-6, and typically come out of the box set to SCSI Id 5. Some BIOSes detect and skip removable devices like the Jaz. If your BIOS will boot from a Jaz, you can set your main SCSI harddrive to SCSI Id 1, then you can change the Jaz from SCSI Id 5 to 0 when you want to boot from the Jaz.
More typically, the Jaz drive co-exists with an IDE harddrive. Nearly every BIOS will want to boot the first IDE harddrive. Some BIOSes will allow you change a setting in the BIOS setup to boot from a SCSI device first. Others may require you to disable the IDE drives in the BIOS setup. Still others may require detaching the IDE drives physically or disabling the IDE interface.
Although running Linux from a Jaz cartridge is much slower than running from a harddrive, the Jaz drive makes an excellent ERD (Emergency Repair Disk). It's also fun to be able to just pop in some new Linux system or to try Linux on someone else's Jaz-equipped machine.
By far the easiest way to install Linux on the Jaz cartridge is simply to follow the install procedure for your favorite distribution with the Jaz drive being the only drive on the system. I've done this with RedHat 5.2, and it works perfectly. If you're not completely comfortable with doing weird, wild stuff with LILO, it's the only way to go.
If you want to do an "install" from your running system, you can often succeed in "building" a bootable system on a Jaz cartridge.
/dev
files are copied. Be sure all permissions, ownership and group ids
are retained./jaz/etc/fstab to mount the Jaz cartridge partition(s) as
appropriate. Also change /jaz/etc/lilo.conf to match as well.rdev to make it
mount the Jaz cartridge as root. Boot from the floppy when ready
the first time then run LILO to make the Jaz MBR bootable.