The ECN No Name Newsletter is no longer being published. This is an archived issue.

Using Floppies On A Sun Workstation

NO NAME NEWSLETTER -- January 1996

Stacey Clark

There are advantages to purchasing and using floppy disks

store files that are not currently in use
keep copies of important files
remove information from your account at the end of the semester

This article will cover

disk formatting which is a necessary step in making the disk usable
mounting the disk which allows you to access it
unmounting the disk which causes the workstation to eject the disk

Formatting Your Floppy Disk

Before you can save files, your disk must be formatted. If you plan on using the disk to transfer information to a PC it is best to format the disk on the PC instead of the SPARC station. Once the disk has been formatted it can be read from and written to by the Sun workstation as well as most PC's.

WARNING!!: Formatting a disk destroys any data that is already on the disk, so be careful not to format a disk that already contains valuable data.

To format, put your disk into the floppy disk drive on the Sun. At the system prompt, enter fdformat -df . This will format a high-density MS-DOS diskette.

Mounting Your Floppy Disk

The disk must be mounted before you can access it after inserting the disk in the floppy drive. Mounting makes a disk available by adding it as a new directory on the file system. To mount the disk enter volcheck at your system prompt. The disk is now accessible through the /floppy/floppy0 directory. The contents of this directory are really files on the floppy disk (i.e this is where the disk is mounted on the file system).

Some Useful Commands You Might Want To Use

All of the commands below can only be used once the floppy disk has been formatted and mounted. Each command is entered at your system prompt, and remember that the `0' at the end of each command is a zero.

df /floppy/floppy0

This command lists the amount of used/free space available on the floppy disk.

ls /floppy/floppy0

This command lists files stored on the disk.

du /floppy/floppy0

This command lists the space used by files in each directory. NOTE: You must have the trailing `/'.

Writing/Saving Files To Your Floppy

To write or save files on your floppy disk, copy (cp) or move (mv) the files you want saved to the /floppy/floppy0 directory.

Example:

cp floppy.txt /floppy/floppy0/floppy.txt

This will place a copy of this newsletter article on my floppy disk.

mv floppy.txt /floppy/floppy0/floppy.txt

This will move the original copy of this newsletter article to my floppy disk.

cp\ *.txt\ /floppy/floppy0

This will copy all the files ending with a .txt extension onto my floppy disk. Wildcard characters (*) can also be used with the mv command.

Unmounting Your Floppy Disk

Unmounting removes the floppy0 directory and ejects the floppy disk. First close all the files and move to your home directory. Do this by typing cd . If you try to unmount the floppy while still in the floppy0 directory the Sun will try to reboot to re-establish the default file system. Now unmount the floppy by entering eject floppy at your system prompt.

Using a floppy disk on a Sun workstation is a simple procedure, but problems can always arise with learning how to do something new. If you receive an error message when trying to use a floppy disk and you can't make any sense out of it, contact your terminal room consultant or your site specialist. Remember that 3.5 inch floppy disks are available in two forms, high density and low density. You must use high density (2SHD) disks on the Sun workstation.

webmaster@ecn.purdue.edu

Last modified: Friday, 12-Sep-97 18:15:23 EST

HTML