Access to floppy drives (ESIX)

[Derek E. Terveer]

In article <2190 at tmiuv0.uucp> rick at tmiuv0.uucp writes:
> In article <5605 at aplcen.apl.jhu.edu>, trw at aplcen.apl.jhu.edu (Weil timothy) writes:
> > excuse my ignorance but I've yet to figure out how
> > onemoves from disk to disk (HD, oppy A:, floppy B:)
> > using aPC-based UNIX OS.
> >  
> > I made an attempt at 'ls -l < /dev/rdsk/ft0'
> > which lit up my A: but read from the current directory
> > anyways.
> >  
> > Thanks in Ad Vans 
>
> [..]
> By the way, try "ls -l /dev/dsk/f0t".  The disk is a block device at
> filesystem level, and the "auto-density" selection is "f0t" for the first
> floppy, "f1t" for the second.

I don't think that the original poster was asking how to get the
characteristics of the floppy drive (ls -l file), but rather how to list the
files that are *on* the floppy.

The floppies, in unix, are either a seperate file system that can be attached
to your hard disk with the "mount" command (similar, in essence, to the ms-dos
"join" command) or are archives that may be (typically) created and read with
the "cpio" or "tar" commands.

Try this sequence of commands with a 1.2MB floppy in drive A: as root:

format /dev/rdsk/f0q15dt
mkfs /dev/rdsk/f0q15dt 2400 2 30
labelit /dev/rdsk/f0q15dt mnt myflop
mount /dev/dsk/f0q15dt /mnt
	   ^^^
	   note i'm using "dsk" in this command instead of "rdsk"
ls -l /mnt
cp /tmp/* /mnt
ls -l /mnt
umount /dev/dsk/f0q15dt
ls -l /mnt

This last sequence of commands shows one how to create a "join-able" floppy,
"join" (mount) the floppy, get a directory of its contents, copy some random
files to it, get a directory of the floppy again and, finally, "unjoin" (umount)
the floppy.
Note that you shouldn't ever take the floppy out of the drive until you have
unmounted it with the "umount" command!  Dos will let you get away with this,
unix will not.

I have redirected followups to comp.unix.questions, which is where this
belongs.

derek
-- 
Derek Terveer		det at hawkmoon.MN.ORG