SUMMARY: Floppy disk file systems

From: <Arthur.DeRuyter_at_GDI.CS.minvrom.nl>
Date: Mon, 18 Nov 1996 10:55:17 +0100

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       Files: F:\OSFPOST\SUMMARY.TXT

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THANKS FOR YOUR QUICK RESPONSES :
(Saved my day!)


Pal Baranyai; Alan; Oyanarte Portilho; Steve Wright (Sys Guy);
Tom Webster; Vitul Patel; Guy Dallaire; Tom Rioux; Sam Sarasin;
Dave Cherkus; OLLE ; Marcel Bernards; Pedro j. Lobo Perea;
Jon craig; Sigismondo Boschi; Serge Munhoven; Chris Janowski;

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I asked for a way to transfer data files from a SunOS 4.1.3 machine to a
Digital UNIX Alpha station by using floppies (because there was no
network connection).


The suggestions were to use one of these :

1 mtools
2 cpio on floppy
3 tar on floppy
4 tape
5 writable CD
6 extra hard drive (see below)
7 dd


I didn't have much time, so I tried this one (which worked great) :

  # find . -cpio /dev/rfd0a -print (to save)

  # cpio -iv -I/dev/rfd0a (to retrieve)
    

(Note that the floppy is not mounted as a file system, but accessed as a
raw special file. A floppy device could also be called something like
rrz0a on your system.)

You can also do it this way :

  #tar -c something -f /dev/fd0c

  or with compression (you can use gzip, zip etc. instead of compress):

  #tar -c something -f - | compress -c | dd of=/dev/fd0c

or

  #tar cvf /dev/fd0c ./mydir

  #tar xvf /dev/floppy (on sun if they still call the floppy floppy).



Formatting a floppy is done by :

  fdformat (SunOS),
  fddisk or scu (DU)


About Mtools:

-Mtools can be used with FAT filesystems.
-They can be implied on both Sun and DEC Alpha machines.
-Using the FAT file system has some limitations (like file name
 lengths).
-Mstools offers multi platform portability.


Jon's suggestion to use an axtra hard drive might be a bit to
complicated for me, but I won't keep any 'wild ideas' from you...

Here a wild idea I have used in the past with SCO systems wo/ Tape
Drives. Configure up an extra hard drive to the system. Then use cpio
or tar to create an archive on the raw drive partition as if it is a tape.
Be sure to use the character device name and the format should be as
portable between systems as raw tape. The only trick that I can think of
would be sure to have partitions that line up between systems and avoid
the first few tracks so as to not step on data when changing the partition
information. I am not fimiliar with the SUN OS so I have no idea as to
the flexibility afforded to you when slicing up a drive.

Hope this helps as it would be faster than setting up a serial UUCP link.


#####

Arthur (deruyter_at_gdi.cs.minvrom.nl)

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Received on Mon Nov 18 1996 - 11:25:27 NZDT

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