*BSD News Article 82178


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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
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Message-ID: <55i6ue$jca@uriah.heep.sax.de>
References: <54r0bv$4qm@crcnis3.unl.edu>
Reply-To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de (Joerg Wunsch)
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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. ;-)