About Removable Media

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Removable media services enable you to access removable media but without requiring administrative rights, unlike with manual mounting.

If the media contains a file system and a label, the media label name is used to name the /media/pathname mount point. If a label is not present, the disk model name is used to name the media, such as /media/cdrom. A generic nickname is used only for legacy symbolic links. For example, /rmdisk/rmdisk0.

If your system has more than one type of removable device, see the following table for their access points.

Table 6 How to Access Data on Removable Media

Media	Unlabeled Media Pathnames	Labeled Media Pathname Examples
Hard disk	`/media/usb-disk` or the legacy path `/rmdisk/rmdisk0`	`/media/00JB-00CRA0`
DVD	`/media/cdrom`	`/media/Oracle_Solaris-n-text-X86`

To identify mounted media on your system, use the rmmount –l command. For example:

# rmmount -l
/dev/dsk/c4t0d3p0       rmdisk5,/media/223UHS-SD-MMC
/dev/dsk/c2t0d0s2       cdrom1,cd1,sr1,Oracle_Solaris-11_1-AI-SPARC,  
                           /media/Oracle_Solaris-11_1-AI-SPARC
/dev/dsk/c3t0d0p0       rmdisk2,/media/00JB-00CRA0

In the sample output, the mounted devices are as follows:

/dev/dsk/c4t0d3p0 – CF card in a USB card reader
/dev/dsk/c2t0d0s2 – DVD-ROM
/dev/dsk/c3t0d0p0 – Removable USB disk

Removable Media Considerations

File system formats in Oracle Solaris consist of the basic "bit" formatting, in addition to the structure to support an Oracle Solaris file system. The procedures required to prepare a media for each type of file system are different. Therefore, before you format a device, consider which procedure to follow.

About Formatting Removable Media

You can use the rmformat command to format and perform other management tasks on removable media. File systems are mounted automatically. So, you might have to unmount media before you can format it, if the media contains an existing file system.

The rmformat command has three formatting options:

quick – This option formats media without certification or with limited certification of certain tracks on the media.
long – This option completely formats media. For some devices, the use of this option might include the certification of the whole media by the drive.
force – This option formats completely without user confirmation. On media with a password-protection mechanism, this option clears the password before formatting. On media without password protection, this option forces a long format.