How to Make Local Diskettes Available to Other Systems

You can configure your system to share its diskettes; in other words, make any diskettes in those drives available to other systems. Once your diskette drives are shared, other systems can access the diskettes they contain simply by mounting them, as described in "How to Access Diskettes on Other Systems".

1. Become superuser.

2. Find out whether the NFS daemon (nfsd) is running.

   # ps -ef | grep nfsd root 14533 1 17 10:46:55 ? 0:00 /usr/lib/nfs/nfsd -a 16 root 14656 289 7 14:06:02 pts/3 0:00 grep nfsd

   If the daemon is running, a line for /usr/lib/nfs/nfsd will appear, as shown above. If the daemon is not running, only the grep nfsd line will appear.

3. Select an option from the following table.

   If ...	Then ...
   nfsd is running	Go to Step 8
   nfsd is not running	Continue with Step 4

4. Create a dummy directory for nfsd to share.

   # mkdir /dummy-dir

   dummy-dir

   Can be any directory name; for example, dummy. This directory will not contain any files. Its only purpose is to "wake up" the NFS daemon so that it notices your shared diskettes.

5. Add the following entry into /etc/dfs/dfstab.

   share -F nfs -o ro [-d comment] /dummy-dir

   When you start the NFS daemon, it will see this entry, "wake up," and notice the shared diskette drive. Note that the comment (preceded by -d) is optional.

6. Start the NFS daemon.

   # /etc/init.d/nfs.server start

7. Verify that the NFS daemon is indeed running.

   # ps -ef | grep nfsd root 14533 1 17 10:46:55 ? 0:00 /usr/lib/nfs/nfsd -a 16 root 14656 289 7 14:06:02 pts/3 0:00 /grep nfsd

8. Eject any diskette currently in the drive.

   # eject floppy0

9. Assign root write permissions to /etc/rmmount.conf.

   # chmod 644 /etc/rmmount.conf

10. Add the following lines to /etc/rmmount.conf.

    # File System Sharing share floppy*

    These lines share any diskette loaded into your system's diskette drives.

11. Remove write permissions from /etc/rmmount.conf.

    # chmod 444 /etc/rmmount.conf

    This step returns the file to its default permissions.

12. Load a diskette.

    --Insert the diskette-- # volcheck -v media was found

    The diskette you now load, and all subsequent diskettes, will be available to other systems. To access the diskette, the remote user must mount it by name, according to the instructions in "How to Access Diskettes on Other Systems".

13. Verify that the diskette is available to other systems by using the share(1M) command.

    If the diskette is available, its share configuration will be displayed. (The shared dummy directory will also be displayed.)

    # share - /dummy ro "dummy dir to wake up NFS daemon" - /myfiles rw ""

Example--Making Local Diskettes Available to Other Systems

The following example makes any diskette loaded into the local system's diskette drive available to other systems on the network.

# ps -ef | grep nfsd
    root 10127  9986  0 08:25:01 pts/2    0:00 grep nfsd
    root 10118     1  0 08:24:39 ?        0:00 /usr/lib/nfs/nfsd -a
# mkdir /dummy
# vi /etc/dfs/dfstab
(Add the following line:)
share -F nfs -o ro  /dummy
# eject floppy0
# chmod 644 /etc/rmmount.conf
# vi /etc/rmmount
(Add the following line to the File System Sharing section.)
share floppy*
# chmod 444 /etc/rmmount.conf
(Load a diskette.)
# volcheck -v
media was found
# share
-               /dummy   ro   ""  
-               /floppy/myfiles   rw   ""