Managing Removable Media (Overview)
This chapter provides general guidelines for managing removable media in the Solaris environment.
This is a list of the overview information in this chapter.
What's New in Managing Removable Media?
Volume management features have been improved to fully support removable media. This improvement means that DVD-ROMs, Iomega and Universal Serial Bus (USB) Zip drives and Jaz drives, CD-ROMs, and diskettes are mounted and available for reading when they are inserted.
You can use both the Common Desktop Environment (CDE) volume management and the Solaris command line to fully manage removable media.
With the volume management improvements, you can:
Format, label, and set read or write software protection on removable media with the new rmformat command. This command replaces the fdformat command for formatting removable media.
Create and verify a PCFS file system on removable media with the mkfs_pcfs and fsck_pcfs commands.
Create an fdisk partition and a PCFS file system on removable media on a SPARC system to facilitate data transfers to IA systems.
Guidelines for using removable media are:
Use UDFS and PCFS to transfer data between DVD media.
Use the tar or cpio commands to transfer files between rewritable media such as a PCMCIA memory card or diskette with a UFS file system. A UFS file system that is created on a SPARC system is not identical to a UFS file system on PCMCIA or to a diskette that is created on an IA system.
Set write protection to protect important files on Jaz or Zip drives or diskettes. Apply a password to Iomega media.
Where to Find Managing Removable Media Tasks
Use these references to find step-by-step instructions for managing removable media.
Removable Media Management Task | For More Information |
|---|---|
Access removable media | |
Format removable media | |
Write data and music CDs |
For information on using removable media with File Manager in the Common Desktop Environment, see Solaris Common Desktop Environment: User's Guide.
Removable Media Features and Benefits
The Solaris environment gives users and software developers a standard interface for dealing with removable media. Referred to as volume management, this interface provides three major benefits:
By automatically mounting removable media, it simplifies their use. (For a comparison between manual and automatic mounting, see the following section.)
It enables you to access removable media without having to become superuser.
It allows you to give other systems on the network automatic access to any removable media on your local system. For more information, see Chapter 18, Accessing Removable Media (Tasks).
Comparison of Automatic and Manual Mounting
The following table compares the steps involved in manual mounting (without volume management) and automatic mounting (with volume management) of removable media.
Table 17-1 Comparison of Manual and Automatic Mounting
Steps | Manual Mounting | Automatic Mounting |
|---|---|---|
1 | Insert media. | Insert media. |
2 | Become superuser. | For diskettes, use the volcheck command. |
3 | Determine the location of the media device. | Volume manager (vold) automatically performs many of the tasks previously required to manually mount and work with removable media. |
4 | Create a mount point. |
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5 | Make sure you are not in the mount point directory. |
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6 | Mount the device using the proper mount options. |
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7 | Exit the superuser account. |
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8 | Work with files on media. | Work with files on media. |
9 | Become superuser. |
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10 | Unmount the media device. |
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11 | Eject media. | Eject media. |
12 | Exit the superuser account. |
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What You Can Do With Volume Management
Essentially, volume management enables you to access removable media just as manual mounting does, but more easily and without the need for superuser access. To make removable media easier to work with, you can mount removable media in easy-to-remember locations.
Table 17-2 How to Access Data on Removable Media Managed by Volume Manager
Access | Insert | Find the Files Here |
|---|---|---|
Files on the first diskette | The diskette and enter volcheck | /floppy |
Files on the first removable hard disk | The removable hard disk and enter volcheck | /rmdisk/jaz0 or /rmdisk/zip0 |
Files on the first CD | The CD and wait for a few seconds | /cdrom/volume-name |
Files on the first DVD | The DVD and wait for a few seconds | /dvd/volume-name |
Files on the first PCMCIA | The PCMCIA and wait for a few seconds | /pcmem/pcmem0 |
If your system has more than one type of removable device, see the following table for their access points.
Table 17-3 Where to Access Removable Media
Media Device | Access File Systems With This Path | Access Raw Data With This Path |
|---|---|---|
First diskette drive | /floppy/floppy0 | /vol/dev/aliases/floppy0 |
Second diskette drive | /floppy/floppy1 | /vol/dev/aliases/floppy1 |
First CD-ROM drive | /cdrom/cdrom0 | /vol/dev/aliases/cdrom0 |
Second CD-ROM drive | /cdrom/cdrom1 | /vol/dev/aliases/cdrom1 |
First removable hard disk | /rmdisk/jaz0, /rmdisk/jaz1 /rmdisk/zip0, /rmdisk/zip1 | /vol/dev/aliases/jaz0 /vol/dev/aliases/zip0 |
First PCMCIA drive | /pcmem/pcmem0 | /vol/dev/aliases/pcmem0 |