Subject: Re: SCSI card setup
To: None <netbsd-help@netbsd.org>
From: Andy Ball <ball@cyberspace.org>
List: netbsd-help
Date: 11/14/2003 17:35:02
Hello 

  JS> As for the zip, I haven't tried anything yet on it, so
    > if anyone has more info about working with a zip on
    > NetBSD, please let me know.

At home I have a USB Zip drive that NetBSD presents to me as
though it were just another SCSI disk.  I use it quite a lot
FAT filesystem disks (carrying data between home and the
office).  I used to type something like 'mount -t msdos
/dev/sd0h /mnt/zip' to use them, but I added an entry to
/etc/fstab so these days I just type 'mount /mnt/zip'.

I've experimentally used one Zip disk as though it were a
tape... I'm not sure if tar counts as a filesystem.

I have thought about putting disklabels and ffs filesystems
on some disks: not so much for any performance advantage,
but it might be better at preserving file permissions than
FAT is.

  JS> Anyway, I was wondering, since I need this disk
    > mounted everytime I turn the computer on, if there was
    > a way to get the disk automatically mounted during the
    > boot process.

You can find out more about that by looking at the man page
for fstab.  You may need to add something like...

/dev/sd1c /mnt/annex ffs auto

    ...assuming sd1c is the partition that you want to mount
and that you make an empty directory called annex in /mnt.

  JS> Also, can I assign a different directory besides /mnt
    > when I mount the disk?

I'm guessing you could, although it's not something that I
remember trying.

- Andy Ball.