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Solaris 8 (SPARC Platform Edition) 6/00 Release Notes Update

Documents Affected: "Improved Removable Media Management" in Solaris 8 System Administration Supplement and "Removable Media" in Solaris 8 User Supplement

The "Improved Removable Media Management" section of the Solaris 8 System Administration Supplement and the "Removable Media" section of the Solaris 8 User Supplement do not sufficiently describe how working with removable media has changed since the Solaris 8 release.

These sections should read as follows:

In the Solaris 8 6/00 release, volume manager (vold) actively manages all removable media devices. This means any attempt to access removable media with device names such as /dev/rdsk/cntndnsn or /dev/dsk/cntndnsn will be unsuccessful.

CDE's Removable Media Manager or the volume manager pathnames such as /cdrom0, /floppy, /rmdisk, /jaz0, or /zip0 are the only way to access the devices as long as volume manager (vold) is running.

You can also access removable media by their entries in the /vol/dev directory. For example:

/vol/dev/rdiskette0/volume-name for a floppy disk, or

/vol/dev/rdsk/cntndn/volume-name for a CD-ROM or removable hard disk

If a removable media device contains a removable medium, its alias appears in the /vol/dev/aliases directory as a symbolic link to its path in the /vol/dev directory. For example, if there's a floppy disk labeled test in floppy drive 0 and a CD labeled test in the CD-ROM drive at /dev/rdsk/c2t1d0, you will see the following output:


$ ls -l /vol/dev/aliases
lrwxrwxrwx	1 root root	30 May 11 12:58 cdrom0 -> /vol/dev/rdsk/c2t1d0/test
lrwxrwxrwx	1 root root	30 May 11 12:58 floppy0 -> /vol/dev/rdiskette0/test

If you are unsure which device name to choose, use the eject -n command to display device names for all removable media devices. For example, use the device name on the right side of eject -n output to determine which device name to use with the fsck, mkfs, or newfs commands.

Accessing Jaz or Zip Drives

You can determine whether accessing your Jaz or Zip drives changes from previous Solaris releases depending on whether you upgrade or install the Solaris 8 6/00 release:

Follow the procedure below if you want to access your Jaz and Zip drives the same way as previous Solaris releases.

  1. Become superuser.

  2. Comment the following line in the /etc/vold.conf file by inserting a pound (#) sign at the beginning of the text, like this: 


    #use rmdisk drive /dev/rdsk/c*s2 dev_rmdisk.so rmdisk%d

  3. Reboot the system.


    # init 6