Volume Management

Volume Management is a program in the operating system that automates the administration of your CD-ROMs and diskettes. For example, in previous Solaris releases (Solaris 2.1 or earlier), to mount and access data on a CD-ROM you had to perform many administrative steps (refer to ""Comparing Automatic and Manual Mounting"""Comparing Automatic and Manual Mounting").

In the Solaris operating environment, Volume Management automatically mounts CD-ROMs and diskettes with file systems at /cdrom/cdrom_name and /floppy/floppy_name respectively. It also keeps track of CD-ROM and diskette file systems during a workstation session (rebooting will clear the in-memory database). To view the media that has been inserted during a workstation session, list /vol/dsk:

---

% ls /vol/dsk
supp_sol_2_7_smcc
unnamed_cdrom				unnamed_floppy

---

Volume Management uses the configuration file /etc/vold.conf to determine which devices it manages. The default /etc/vold.conf file contains the following information:

---

# @(#)vold.conf 1.13     92/10/28 SMI
#
# Volume Daemon Configuration file
#

# Database to use (must be first)
db db_mem.so

# Labels supported
label dos label_dos.so floppy
label cdrom label_cdrom.so cdrom
label sun label_sun.so floppy 

# Devices to use
use cdrom drive /dev/dsk/c0t6 dev_cdrom.so cdrom0
use floppy drive /dev/fd0 dev_floppy.so floppy0

# Actions
insert /vol*/dev/fd[0-9]/* user=root /usr/sbin/rmm
insert /vol*/dev/dsk/* user=root /usr/sbin/rmm
eject /vol*/dev/fd[0-9]/* user=root /usr/sbin/rmm
eject /vol*/dev/dsk/* user=root /usr/sbin/rmm
notify /vol*/rdsk/* group=tty /usr/lib/vold/volmissing -c

# List of file system types unsafe to eject
unsafe ufs hsfs pcfs

---

Before you add secondary CD-ROM and diskette drives to a system, update the /etc/vold.conf file by adding the new devices to the "Devices to use" list. The syntax for a "Devices to use" entry is:

---

use device type special shared_object symname options

---

Each variable item in the device control line is defined in Table 4-3.

Table 4-3 Device Control Syntax Descriptions

Syntax	Description	Supported and Default Values
device	The type of removable media device to be used	cdrom, diskette
type	The class of device: multiple or single media support	drive
special	Path name of the device to be used. Path usually begins with /dev	Default support is for the devices /dev/dsk/c0t6 and /dev/diskette
shared_object	The location of the code that manages this device	The default location is /usr/lib/vold/name_ of_shared_object
symname	The symbolic name that refers to this device; the symname is placed in the device directory, either /cdrom or /floppy	Default values are  cdrom0, floppy0
options	The user, group, and mode permissions for the media inserted	Default values are user=nobody, group=nobody, mode=0666

After updating the /etc/vold.conf file, attach the drive and reboot your system with a reconfiguration boot.

1. ---

   Note -

   For information on booting your system in different modes, see "To Boot After Connecting a Peripheral Device"."

   ---

---

Note -

Volume Management controls the /dev/dsk/c0t6d0s0 path to a CD-ROM drive and the /dev/diskette path to a diskette drive. An attempt to access a CD-ROM or diskette using these paths will result in an error message.

---

---

Note -

For more information about Volume Management, see man Pages(4): File Formats and the System Administration Guide.

---