System Administration Guide: Devices and File Systems

Changes and Improvements to Removable Media Management

Solaris Express 12/06: Previous features for managing removable media have been removed and replaced with services and methods that provide better removable media management.

For information about using vold in previous Solaris 10 releases, see System Administration Guide: Devices and File Systems.

The following new features are available:

The following features are removed:

Backward Compatibility

The following features provide backward compatibility with previous Solaris removable media features:

Mounting and Unmounting Removable Media

Most commands that begin with vol* are removed in this release. A modified version of rmmount and a new rmumount command are available to mount and unmount removable media.

These commands can be used to mount by device name, label, or mount point. For example, to mount an iPod:


% rmmount ipod

For example, to unmount the file systems on a DVD:


# rmumount cdrom
cdrom /dev/dsk/c0t6d0s5 unmounted
cdrom /dev/dsk/c0t6d0s0 unmounted

For more information, see rmmount(1M).

Mounting and Unmounting Diskettes

You can use the existing volcheck command to manually poll diskettes and mount them if a new diskette is detected.

If you manually reformat diskette after it is connected to the system, HAL is not automatically notified. Continue to use the volcheck command to notify the system and attempt to automount a new file system on a diskette.

Ejecting Removable Media

As in previous Solaris releases, use the eject command to unmount and eject removable media. However, the following eject options are available:

-f

Forces the device to eject even if the device is busy.

-l

Displays paths and nicknames of devices that can be ejected.

-t

A CD-ROM tray close command is provided to the device. Not all devices support this option.

For example, to eject by its volume label:


% eject mypictures

As in previous Solaris releases, you might need to issue the volcheck command before using the eject command to eject a diskette.

For more information, see eject(1).

Customizing Removable Media Management

For most customizations that were available in the vold.conf and rmmount.conf files, you will need to either use Desktop Volume manager preferences or modify the .fdi files.

Disabling Removable Media Features

You can disable some or all removable media features in this release: