Problem with ZIP disk write

James Rich (james.rich@m.cc.utah.edu)
Wed, 14 Oct 1998 22:39:58 -0600

Hi folks,
I believe I have found an easily reproduced problem with 2.1.108
involving ZIP disks. We have been using a ZIP drive to backup our home
directories on our small server running 2.1.108. Someone accidently
removed the ZIP disk from the drive and didn't replace it before the
cron job ran to do the backup. The command we are using to backup is:

tar -cf /dev/hdd /home

Without the disk in the drive the machine locked up solid. There were
no messages in the logs or on the console. No response to ping or any
network connection - only a hard reboot brought it back up. I think
what should happen is that it should end in error with something like:

/dev/hdd - no such file or directory

or something like that (I think this is what happens when we back up to
SCSI tape with no tape in the drive).

I'm sorry I can't really do a lot of testing on this - The machine needs
to be up all the time and I don't have access to a ZIP drive for my home
machine. Let me know if this is not a kernel bug and if not what I can
do to fix it. If only I knew enough to write kernel code myself! Oh
well, I'm learning.

--
James Rich			For Linux help and information
				please visit:
reply to:			http://www.linuxrx.com/


james.rich@m.cc.utah.edu	Linux and AS/400 admin.


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