test

SunPCi User's Guide

SunPCi Drives

SunPCi software uses three different kinds of disk drives:

Emulated Hard Drives

When you install the SunPCi software, it creates a default C: drive and assigns it to an emulated drive file named C.diskimage, which resides in your ~/pc directory. By default, all SunPCi windows are booted from this drive C: and use the COMMAND.COM, AUTOEXEC.BAT, and CONFIG.SYS files located on this drive.

Note –

You can create several C: and D: drive files, all with different applications and configurations, and attach a drive as needed. Only one C: drive and one D: drive can be active at any one time. They may not be the same file; that is, do not attach a file as drive C: and then attach the same file as drive D:.

Creating and Configuring a New C: or D: Drive contains information on how to create and configure these drives.

Backing Up Your C: Drive

Once you have successfully installed Windows 95/NT, you can make a copy of the disk image of your C: drive. This allows you to keep a backup copy of the drive in case you need to recover the contents of your drive at any time.

Note –

We strongly recommend that once you have installed and configured SunPCi and your Windows applications, that you make a backup copy of your C: drive.

Your C: drive is actually a large file stored on the hard disk of your workstation. You use the SunPCi cphd (copy hard disk) command to make a copy of the file.

To back up your C: drive, follow these steps:

  1. Locate the disk image of your C: drive.

    It should be located in the directory called pc within your home directory on your workstation. To view the contents of the directory, type the following commands and press Enter after each: 

    % cd ~/pc
% ls

    You should see a listing of files, including the name you assigned to your C: drive during installation (for example, C.diskimage).

  2. Make a copy of the file.

    Type the following command, substituting the name of your hard disk and the name you want to assign to the copy. Press Return. 

    % /opt/SUNWspci/bin/cphd C.diskimage C.diskimage.copy

Extended Hard Drives

An extended drive is actually a directory that gives you access to the Solaris file system from the SunPCi program. They can be accessed on your local system, or remotely across the network. With extended drives, you can share applications and data files. The SunPCi program permits up to 22 extended drives for storing applications and files.

There are three different kinds of extended drives:

Redirected Drives

Note –

Redirected drives work with DOS and Windows 95 only. Because Windows NT does not contain DOS, you will not be able to use redirected drives with Windows NT. If you are using Windows NT, skip this section.

A redirected drive is a drive that is mapped for you in DOS. The default extended drives F:, H:, and R: are redirected drives.These drives are automatically set up for you during SunPCi installation, and are named in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file. This means that you do not have to access drive F: manually in order to use the DOS commands it contains.

By default, SunPCi assigns the following extended drives:

If desired, you can use rem (remark) statements to remove the default drive mappings for H: and R: from your C:\autoexec.bat file and use them to mount other extended drives.

File System Drives

A file system drive is an extended drive that you map using Windows Explorer to directories on your Solaris file system. Unlike the redirected drives, file system drives can make full use of long file names in Windows 95 and Windows NT.

To map a file system drive in Windows 95, refer to Accessing Solaris Files and CD-ROMs From Windows 95.

To map a file system drive in Windows NT, refer to Accessing Solaris Files and Directories in Windows NT.

Network Drives

A network drive is also mapped through Windows Explorer, but it maps to locations on your network. To access Solaris files and CD-ROMs from Windows 95, you will need to map them as network drives as described Accessing Solaris Files and CD-ROMs From Windows 95.

If you are using Windows NT, the procedure for mapping network drives is different from that used in Windows 95.

Accessing Solaris Files and CD-ROMs From Windows 95

This section explains how to assign and use Solaris extended drives (network drives) with SunPCi and Windows 95 using the Windows Explorer.

To map a Solaris drive or directory to work with Windows 95, perform the following procedure:

  1. Click Start and select Programs and Windows Explorer from the pop-up menus.

    The Exploring screen is displayed.

  2. From the Tools menu, select Map Network Drive.

    The Map Network Drive dialog box is displayed.

  3. Click on the drop-down arrow to the right of the Drive: field.

    A list of unassigned drive letters is displayed on the drop-down menu.

    Note –

    Any extended drive that is already mapped in the autoexec.bat file (such as the default drives F:, H:, and R:) will appear on the list, but you cannot use them for mapping. If you attempt to re-map these drives, the system will return a Device not connected error.

  4. Scroll downward until you find the drive letter you want, and then click to select it.

    The drive letter is displayed in the Drive: field.

  5. Type the following path into the Path: field, substituting the names of your directory and subdirectory: 

    \\directory\subdirectory, or
\\directory\.

    For example, to map a Solaris CD-ROM to work with Windows, use this path: 

    \\cdrom\cdrom0

    Note –

    A mapped path requires two components, so if you want to map a drive to a UNIX subdirectory component that has only one element, you will need to use a period (.) as the second element. For example: 

    \\home\.

    Note –

    Do not use an asterisk in the mapping path, or Windows 95 will return a Device not connected error.

  6. If you want this extended drive to map automatically whenever you start up SunPCi, click the checkbox next to Reconnect at logon.

    Click OK. The new extended drive appears in the Exploring window.

Mapping a Drive Letter to a Directory with a Long Path in Windows 95

If you need to map a drive to a UNIX directory that contains more than two path elements (/directory/subdirectory/subdir2), you will need to use UNIX symbolic links. For example:

  1. Become root on your machine.

  2. Create a link from your root filesystem, substituting your path for the one shown in the following example. Type the following command and press Return: 

    # ln -s /net/typicalmachine/files1/anydir /anydir

  3. Click Start and select Programs and Windows Explorer from the pop-up menus.

    The Exploring screen is displayed.

  4. From the Tools menu, select Connect Network Drive.

    The Map Network Drive dialog box is displayed.

  5. Click on the drop-down arrow to the right of the Drive: field.

    A list of unassigned drive letters is displayed on the drop-down menu.

  6. Scroll downward until you find the drive letter you want, and then click to select it.

    The drive letter is displayed in the Drive: field.

  7. Type the following path into the Path: field, substituting the names of your directory for anydir: 

    \\anydir\.

  8. If you want this extended drive to map automatically whenever you start up SunPCi, click the checkbox next to Reconnect at logon.

  9. Click OK.

    The new extended drive appears in the Exploring window.

    Your network drive now maps to /anydir, which is a symbolic link to the destination directory /net/typicalmachine/files1/anydir.

Installing Windows 95 Applications on Extended Drives

You can install Windows 95 applications on either of your emulated drives (C: and D:), or on any of the drives that you create using Windows Explorer. Because of the DOS file name limitations on the default extended drives (F:, H:, and R:), you should avoid installing Windows 95 applications on the default extended drives. Refer to Extended Hard Drives for more information on the default extended drives.

Accessing Solaris Files and Directories in Windows NT

Note –

You do not have to map CD-ROMs in Windows NT. Windows NT contains a separate CD-ROM driver.

Because Windows NT allows you to map files and drives on your local machine or on other machines in your workgroup, you need to specify that a file system drive resides on your Solaris workstation.

To map a file system drive in Windows NT, perform the following steps:

  1. Click Start and select Programs and Windows NT Explorer from the pop-up menus.

    The Exploring screen is displayed.

  2. From the Tools menu, select Map Network Drive.

    The Map Network Drive dialog box is displayed.

  3. Click on the drop-down arrow to the right of the Drive: field.

    A list of unassigned drive letters is displayed on the drop-down menu.

  4. Scroll downward until you find the drive letter you want, and then click to select it.

    The drive letter is displayed in the Drive: field.

  5. Type the following path into the Path: field, substituting the names of your directory and subdirectory: 

    \\localhost\directory\subdirectory

    For example, to map a drive to /home/joeuser on your Solaris workstation, use this path: 

    \\localhost\home\joeuser

  6. If you want this drive to map automatically whenever you start up SunPCi, click the checkbox next to Reconnect at logon.

    Click OK. The new file system drive appears in the Exploring window the next time you open Windows NT Explorer.

    Note –

    You can map long directory paths (that is, paths with more than two elements) in Windows NT. For example, you can map the path \\localhost\usr\local\bin in Windowns NT without using a symbolic link, but you would need to use the link to map the same directory path in Windows 95.

Diskette Drives

If the workstation you are using has an internal diskette drive, it is referred to in Windows as drive A:.

Note –

If you are running Solaris Volume Manager (vold) on your workstation, you will need to disable Volume Manager's control of the floppy drive before the floppy will function under SunPCi. The script vold_floppy_disable, located in the /opt/SUNWspci/bin directory, disables vold control of the floppy. To use the script, run it before you start up SunPCi. Otherwise, you will not be able to use the floppy drive as drive A:.

Most workstations come with one diskette drive; however, there are some SPARCstation systems that do not have a built-in diskette drive. If you have a SPARCstation system that does not have a built-in diskette drive, you will need to have one installed if you intend to install software or copy data from diskette.

Ejecting Diskettes

To eject the diskette from the drive, first use the following command in a UNIX window: 

% eject floppy

The system returns the following message: 

/dev/rdiskette can now be manually ejected

Press the manual eject button on your workstation's floppy drive to eject the diskette.

Using Low-Density Diskettes

Note –

Since Windows NT does not use DOS, you will not be able to perform this procedure on a Windows NT system.

Under the SunPCi program, just as on a PC, low-density diskettes must be formatted, read, or written as low-density diskettes. To format low-density diskettes, you must explicitly specify the diskette parameters while formatting.

To format a low-density DOS diskette, perform the following step:

  1. At the DOS prompt, enter the DOS format command with /t and /n options.

    For example, enter the following command at the DOS prompt: 

    C:\> format a: /t:80 /n:9

    For more information about the format command, enter HELP FORMAT at the DOS prompt.

CD-ROM Drives

SunPCi CD-ROM drives work differently in Windows NT than they do in Windows 95. The following sections explain how the CD-ROM drives works under each version of Windows.

Windows 95 CD-ROM Drives

You can connect to CD-ROM drives from within the SunPCi program to access DOS and Windows 95 software. The CD-ROM must be in the High Sierra File System (HSFS) format (which includes most, but not all, commercially sold CDs), and it can only be accessed by creating a SunPCi extended drive. The SunPCi software does not support Microsoft CD-ROM extensions.

This default drive mapping does not support long file names for use with Windows 95. To install software from a CD that requires long file names, map your CD-ROM drive to another drive letter, such as Z:, using Windows Explorer. For instructions on how to do this, refer to Accessing Solaris Files and CD-ROMs From Windows 95.

Note –

If you have Solaris Volume Manager enabled, the default drive mapping for your CD-ROM drive is R:\cdrom\cdrom0.

Windows NT CD-ROM Drives

SunPCi 1.1 software contains a direct CD-ROM driver for Windows NT, so mapping is not necessary if you are running Windows NT. To connect to a CD-ROM drive other than your default (if you are not running vold or if you have more than one CD-ROM drive installed), use the Attach CD-ROM command under the SunPCi Options menu.

Ejecting a CD From a CD-ROM Drive

To eject the CD from your CD-ROM drive, use the Eject CD command under the Options menu or press Meta-E.