Using your floppy
The following is an answer I sent to the FreeBSD questions mailing list:On 15 Jan
99, at 22:19, Roy D. Fulton wrote:
> I’m new to FreeBSD and am quite rusty with UNIX period. I’m having
> trouble trying to use the floppy. Can anyone give me examples of the
> commands needed to prepare, read, and write to a blank floppy, and also
> how to use DOS floppies?
I was trying the same thing last night. I was told to do the following:
format: fdformat /dev/rfd0 disk label: disklabel -w -r /dev/rfd0 fd1440 new file system: newfs /dev/rfd0
[I’m now running 5.2.1 on my laptop, and I don’t have a /dev/rfd0. I’m using
/dev/fd0 instead and all seems well.]
I’ve been told to do the above, then mount it. Then you can treat it like any other file system. Use cp to copy, mv to move, etc.
mount floppy: mount /dev/fd0 /mnt mount DOS floppy: mount -t msdos /dev/fd0 /mnt
The above commands allow you to access the contents of the floppy via the /mnt directory.
and remember to unmount:
umount /mnt
Hope this helps.
Quick mount floppy
This tip is thanks to aLan Tait <aLan@fil.net>.You might have seen the article on quickly mounting the CD-ROM. Well, here’s one for your floppy. First, create a mount point for your floppy:
mkdir /fdd
Then add this line to you /etc/fstab file:
/dev/fd0 /fdd ufs rw,noauto 0 0
With such a line, you can mount/unmount your fdd with just the following commands:
mount /fdd umount /fdd