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Solaris 8 System Administration Supplement

Accessing Information on Removable Media

You can access information on removable media with or without using volume manager. For information on accessing information on removable media with File Manager, see "Using Removable Media Manager" in Solaris 8 User Supplement.

Starting 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.

By using CDE's Removable Media Manager or the volume manager path names such as /cdrom0, /floppy, /rmdisk, /jaz0, or /zip0, you can access the devices when the 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 diskette, 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 a diskette that is labeled test is in diskette drive 0 and a CD that is labeled test is in the CD-ROM drive at /dev/rdsk/c2t1d0, you 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.

How to Access Information on Removable Media

Use the appropriate device name to access information by using the command-line interface. You can use the volume manager's nickname from the command line by running the volcheck command before you access the removable media. See rmformat(1) for an explanation of device names.

Examples--Accessing Information on Removable Media

To access information on a diskette, use:


$ volcheck
$ ls /floppy
myfile

To access information on a Jaz drive, use:


$ volcheck
$ ls /rmdisk
jaz0/		jaz1/

To access information on a CD-ROM, use:


$ volcheck
$ ls /cdrom
solaris_8_sparc/

Accessing Jaz Drives 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 next procedure if you want to access your Jaz and Zip drives the same way as in 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