Using the floppy drive on a Sun Computer

This page explains how to use the floppy disk drives on the Sun Solaris computers in the Grad labs.

Students must use IBM PC formatted 1.44mb disks.

First, you must mount the floppy disk on the computer. After you are done working with the floppy, you must unmount the disk before ejecting it. Here are the commands:

To mount:

volcheck

To unmount:

eject

Make sure that the write-protect tab on your floppy is closed before you insert it if you plan to write to it. If not, you will get an error saying that the mounted floppy directory is a read-only filesystem, in which case you should eject the floppy, set the write-protect tab accordingly, insert it again, and re-mount it.

After the floppy is mounted, it will appear as an ordinary UNIX directory in /floppy. If the floppy has no name, it should appear in /floppy/noname. If it does, then it will appear in an appropriately named directory. In either case, there will be a link to the actual directory name called 'floppy0', so you can always access the floppy drive via directory /floppy/floppy0. To access the files, simply use the standard UNIX commands (cp, mv, pico, etc.). You can copy to and from the floppy as you desire.

When you type 'eject' to unmount the floppy, a window will pop up saying that you can now manually eject the floppy from the drive. NOTE: You must not be in the mounted floppy directory when you try to unmount it (as it will obviously still be busy). See the example below.

Here is a sample session. Notice that /floppy contains the volume name and the 'floppy0' link when the floppy is mounted, and nothing when it is not.

cauchy:~> volcheck

cauchy:~> cd /floppy

cauchy:/floppy> ls
floppy0@ noname/

cauchy:/floppy> cd floppy0

cauchy:/floppy/floppy0> ls
AUTOEXEC.BAT* MOUSE.COM*    PMHELP.DAT*   PQMAGIC.OVL*  PQTMP.FIL*
BOOT.INI*     MOUSE.INI*    PQMAGIC.EXE*  PQMAGIC.PQG*  RESCUE.TXT*

cauchy:/floppy/floppy0> cp /tmp/test.txt .

cauchy:/floppy/floppy0> ls
AUTOEXEC.BAT* MOUSE.INI*    PQMAGIC.OVL*  RESCUE.TXT*
BOOT.INI*     PMHELP.DAT*   PQMAGIC.PQG*  test.txt*
MOUSE.COM*    PQMAGIC.EXE*  PQTMP.FIL*

cauchy:/floppy/floppy0> rm test.txt
rm: remove test.txt (yes/no)? yes

cauchy:/floppy/floppy0> ls
AUTOEXEC.BAT* MOUSE.COM*    PMHELP.DAT*   PQMAGIC.OVL*  PQTMP.FIL*
BOOT.INI*     MOUSE.INI*    PQMAGIC.EXE*  PQMAGIC.PQG*  RESCUE.TXT*

cauchy:/floppy/floppy0> cd ..

cauchy:/floppy> eject
/vol/dev/rdiskette0/noname can now be manually ejected