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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.Hawaii.Edu!news.uoregon.edu!newsfeed.orst.edu!newshub.tc.umn.edu!fu-berlin.de!irz401!orion.sax.de!uriah.heep!news From: j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: mounting msdos partition Date: 3 Nov 1996 13:33:02 GMT Organization: Private BSD site, Dresden Lines: 98 Message-ID: <55i6ue$jca@uriah.heep.sax.de> References: <54r0bv$4qm@crcnis3.unl.edu> Reply-To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de (Joerg Wunsch) NNTP-Posting-Host: localhost.heep.sax.de Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Newsreader: knews 0.9.6 X-Phone: +49-351-2012 669 X-PGP-Fingerprint: DC 47 E6 E4 FF A6 E9 8F 93 21 E0 7D F9 12 D6 4E Cc: roberto@freebsd.org obiwan@engrs.unl.edu (Marc Lombardo) wrote: > I have a freebsd system setup on a 386sx with a ide hard drive.... the > system boots with a dos directory in the root directory, but it is > empty. When I do a man mount_msdos it says that that normally the > mount(8) works automatically on bootup.... but it doesn't seem to have > mounted anything from my dos partition (which is the primary partition on > my hard drive). mount_msdos is not supposed to be called by users. You are supposed to call it as: mount -t msdos /dev/wd0s1 /dos If you wanna automate this so that the /dos filesystem is being mounted automatically at boot-time, the following entry in /etc/fstab should do the trick: /dev/wd0s2 /dos msdos rw 0 0 > Anyway, I tried mounting a dos diskette in fd0 using mount_msdos /dev/fd0 > dos, and it worked but when i entered the directory and tried to cd to > directories on the floppy no files showed up. You're probably using a VFAT floppy? The current msdosfs code doesn't support it. > do I have any other options for transfering files from my msdos floppies > or hard drive to my freebsd partition? You can use a plain FAT floppy. You didn't write which version of FreeBSD you're running... if it's a 2.2-SNAP version, there's a command calld `mkdosfs' that allows you to create a plain FAT file system on a floppy. There's also the mtools package in the ports, it does also provide VFAT support now. > also, what is an easy way to write and access files to/from floppy using > bsd? I successfully formatted a disk using bsd but didn't have a clue > as to accessing the floppy after formatting it. Again, mtools is probably more convenient for you. The major confusion for DOS users often arises out of the fact that what messy DOS used to call `formatting' are actually two steps: (low-level) formatting the medium, and creating a file system on it (sometimes refered to as high-level formatting). To increase the confusion, DOS hasn't been consistent in the usage of its tools, and most systems don't provide tools for all formatting steps at all. System Medium fstype low-level high-level DOS <~ 5 floppy FAT format format DOS >= 5 floppy FAT format /u format DOS hard disk FAT non-existant *) format FreeBSD < 2.2 floppy FAT fdformat (mformat) **) FreeBSD >= 2.2 floppy FAT fdformat mkdosfs FreeBSD floppy UFS fdformat disklabel & newfs FreeBSD < 2.1.5 SCSI hard disk UFS non-existant disklabel & newfs FreeBSD >=2.1.5 SCSI hard disk UFS scsiformat disklabel & newfs FreeBSD !SCSI hard disk any non-existant (n.a.) *) Sometimes provided as service by the BIOS setup (ST506 disk), by disk vendors (IDE), or by SCSI host adapters. **) Third-party software. Note that you in general can omit the low-level formatting if the medium is already low-level formatted. Messy DOS up to 5 or so did not provide any means to omit low-level formatting, but radically switched to the controvertial method then (violating the principle of least surprise) in that it now does no longer low-level format at all unless specifically asked to (/u). Hence, fdformat on FreeBSD should be a rarely used step. You only need it for a new floppy, or if you don't trust the formatation any longer. Likewise, scsiformat, while provided, should not be used unless you know your hard disk suffers from too many bad sectors, so you desire a medium reorganization. (Perhaps, this explanation should go into a FAQ. I'm Cc'ing it to Ollivier Robert for this.) -- cheers, J"org joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)