Ask the System Manager
(Frequently Asked Questions)
by Thomas Wallis

LINUX Floppy/ZIP/CD/CD-RW Information for CS Machines

Any CS Office or lab machine (excluding 256 and 257) should have (at minimum) working floppy drives. The floppy and CDROM drives in rooms 256 and 257 are disconnected, as these machines are basically Xterminals, not full LINUX workstations. Some of the Dell systems in 205 and 206 have ZIP and CD-RW drives as well.

Here are the recommended ways of using the different removeable media drives on the Dell machines (as well as office machines):

Floppy Drives

• Method A : Using the mtools set of commands. The mtools commands assume you have an MS-DOS formatted floppy disk (this is the most common under Windows). Many diskettes are preformatted MS-DOS. You can get more information about this package with man mtools

  To get a directory of a floppy disk , use mdir a:
  

  To copy a file from UNIX to the floppy , use :
  mcopy file a:

  Example: mcopy foo.txt a:
  Will copy the UNIX file foo.txt to the floppy drive
  

  To copy a file from the floppy to UNIX , use :
  mcopy a:file unix-file-name

  Example: mcopy a:bar.txt barunix.txt
  will copy the file bar.txt from the A: drive to the UNIX file barunix.txt.
  

  Example 2: mcopy a:bar.txt .
  Copies the file bar.txt from the A: drive to the current UNIX directory ( . ) . Keeps the file name the same.
  
  
  

• Method B: Mounting the floppy under /floppy.

  You can use the command:

  mount /floppy

  to mount the floppy under the LINUX directory tree. The contents of the floppy will be visible with the standard LINUX commands underneath the mount point /floppy . You can then copy files to and from the floppy, edit files, etc. all using standard LINUX commands. When you are done with the floppy, it must be unmounted with the

  umount /floppy

  command. If this is not done, your floppy data may be damaged.

Use floppies or other removeable media to keep copies of your work. If you accidentally remove a file, this could be a timesaver!

ZIP Drives

Some of our Dells and other office machines have either ZIP-100 or ZIP-250 drives. The printing on the front of the ZIP drive tells the capacity (the Dell ZIP drives are ZIP-250s) of the drive. ZIP-250 drives will read and write ZIP-100 media. ZIP-100 drives will not read or write ZIP-250 media. Most ZIP disks are formatted at the factory with an MS-DOS partition table, with the MS-DOS partition being the fourth (and only valid) partition on the disk. Our LINUX systems have been programmed to use the fourth partition to access the ZIP drive. Please use the following command to mount the ZIP drive under LINUX:

mount /zip4

You can then use the standard LINUX commands to view, edit, delete, and copy files underneath /zip4. When you are done with the ZIP disk, use the following command to unmount it:

umount /zip4

This will unmount the zip disk and save any changes you made to it. You can then freely press the unload button on the ZIP drive. If you do this while LINUX is still accessing the disk, you will lose data.

CDROM/CD-RW Access

At the moment, CDROM/CD-RW access is read-only under LINUX. The process of burning CDROMs under LINUX is complex and requires privilege (I am working on this problem).

You can mount a data CDROM in ISO9660 or Microsoft format read-only with the command:

mount /cdrom

You can use standard LINUX commands to access the data underneath /cdrom. To unmount a CDROM, use

umount /cdrom

If the CDROM is still busy under LINUX, you will not be allowed to unmount the CDROM.

Back to Ask The System Manager

Something left out?

The information accessible from this server is provided in good faith, but neither the Wichita State University, nor the Computer Science Department takes any legal responsibility whatsoever for the accuracy or content of data displayed on this server. Please notify us if any error is detected. Thank You !