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Floppy Disk and CD-ROM Filesystems

IRIX allows you to mount and use filesystems on floppy disks, floptical disks, and CD-ROMs. You can use these filesystems on your own system, or you can export them via NFS for use on other systems (if you have NFS installed). See the ONC3/NFS Administrator's Guide for information on exporting filesystems.

The mediad daemon monitors the removable media devices on a system. When media is inserted, mediad scans the media for filesystems and mounts them. The operating instructions for these kinds of filesystems are similar and are covered in detail in the mediad(1M) reference page.

Note: Only one instance of mediad is allowed per system. That is, two invocations of mediad for the same device generate an error.

IRIX supports the following CD-ROM, floptical disk, and floppy disk filesystem formats:

Refer to the mediad(1M) reference page for a complete list of devices supported by mediad, and refer to the filesystems(4) reference page for details concerning supported filesystems.

CD-ROM Filesystems

mediad monitors CD-ROM drives, waiting for a CD-ROM to be inserted. When a CD-ROM is inserted, the filesystem it contains is mounted if the filesystem is in EFS, HFS, ISO 9660, or High Sierra format. When a CD-ROM containing a valid filesystem is inserted, it is automatically mounted on /CDROM (for the first CD-ROM drive) and /CDROM2, /CDROM3, and so on for additional drives.

Note that CD-ROM filesystems are always read-only. When you are finished using the filesystem, issue the eject command and mediad will attempt to unmount the filesystem. If the unmount is successful, it ejects the CD-ROM. When mediad is running, however, any user can unmount and eject a CD-ROM with the eject command.

Floppy Disk Filesystems

Note: In this chapter, the term floppy disk drive also applies to a floptical drive because both are configured and used in the same manner.

Filesystems on floppy disk drives are controlled by the mediad daemon. mediad scans the hardware inventory for devices it knows about and automatically begins monitoring them, waiting for a disk to be inserted. Floppy disk drives are mounted on /floppy if the disk is in FAT (MS-DOS) or HFS (Macintosh) format. If you have more than one floppy disk drive, floppy disks in additional drives are automatically mounted on /floppy2, /floppy3, and so on.

To prevent mediad from monitoring a device, put a command like this in the file /etc/config/mediad.config:

ignore device /dev/scsi/sc0d4l0 

For complete details, refer to the mediad(1M) reference page.

When you are through using the floppy disk, issue the eject command and mediad attempts to unmount the filesystem. If the unmount is successful, it ejects the floppy disk immediately.


CD-ROM Filesystems
Floppy Disk Filesystems

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