SuSE 8.0 and Firewire

[ratman]

SuSE 8.0 installation did not detect my TI ohci compliant Pyro 1394 firewire card. Here's what I did to make it work under Cinelerra (doesn't work under MainActor 3.65, but not sure if 3.65 can capture firewire source video.)

You can insert the needed modules: ieee1394, ohci1394, and raw1394 in a running kernel by using the command insmod at a shell prompt in root. If this works for you, then do the following to load these modules on boot.

Using a text editor such as kEdit, open /etc/modules.conf and add the following lines:

#################
#Firewire
#################
pre-install ieee1394
pre-install ohci1394
pre-install raw1394

Then, open /etc/init.d/boot.local and add the following:

#################
#Firewire
#################
modprobe ieee1394
modprobe ohci1394
modprobe raw1394

WARNING:

Do not follow the instruction here (http://sdb.suse.de/en/sdb/html/olh_ppc_sleep.html) , as you may not be able to recover from the ensuing disaster on boot! I was lucky.

Hope this helps your video editing efforts on Linux.

Cheers, Mike

[kimbermatic]

have u upgraded to suse 8.1? Either way I have some questions:

1. I have a hard drive connected via fire wire, do you?

2. If so, what is it partitioned as?

[ratman]

Haven't upgraded to 8.1 yet. As for a firewire drive, am not sure what changes or additional commands you would need. Sorry.

Mike

[rpalmeri]

Here's how I mounted a firewire (IEEE 1394) iomega Peerless drive. I'm using SuSE 8.0, KDE 3.02, kernel 2.4.18

I'm writing this as simply as I can for all the newbies that don't have a clue (like me!) Some of this will be obvious to you.

In a konsole, type su, hit enter, give password, then give the following commands in this order:

insmod ieee1394

then type

insmod ohci1394

This installs the drivers for the firewire drive.
Now to check if the drive is recognized, type the following in the konsole.

cat /proc/scsi/scsi

This will list all of the scsi devices on your computer. You should see your drive listed.

To get the address of the drive, look in the K-menu, (far left side of screen), open the Contol Center > YaST > Hardware (it will ask you for the root password) > Hardware Info > scroll down to 'scsi' (click to expand)
You should see your drive listed. Click on your drive to expand the view and look to see what the device name is. Mine is /dev/sda
If you haven't already, you need to create a mount point for the drive. As root, what I did was

mkdir /media/peerless

You can choose your own mount point.
Now to mount the drive, again as root

mount -t vfat /dev/sda /media/peerless

This assumes it is formatted as a DOS device with vfat file system.

You should be good to go!

You can modify your /etc/fstab file to make the drive easier to mount. I'm working on that. Also, if you want to format the drive as an ext2 file system, as root, do the following:

/sbin/mke2fs -m 0 /dev/sda
(you would put your /dev/ address in here instead of /dev/sda)

Be careful, this erases all the data on the disk!
Hope this helps.

I'll post the etc/fstab settings if and when I figure them out (newbie, remember?)

__________________
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[kimbermatic]

Well my Speedzter firewire drive is finally working, but I am confused. Let me start from the beginning.

Followed all the helpful directions from everyone, but I could not get by "Not Valid Block Device" error. Then I did something that all my years of Admin training tells you not to do. I booted my machine without turning on my firewire drive prior to booting. Once I was logged on as a non-root user I turned my firewire drive on. Then just clicked on my shortcut to the drive and bingo bango there it was and accessible. :D

But I am really confused is this normal in the linux world? Is it I still have some issues, but by waiting till I am logged on I have circumvented the issue? I have re-created this in root mode and user mode.

Bottom line the drive is working, very, very happy... just lost as to why... nothing new there.