This page describes methods to access files
on the ViewStation's floppy disk drive.
Floppy Disk
Drive Access
You can read or write to the floppy disk drive locally using
shell commands in the Console window, or remotely from a host computer
using rcp (remote copy), or by using NFS. The NFS method is most
useful, and is set by default.
To access the floppy files remotely using NFS, the
ViewStation's clients configuration database requires an entry for nfsd,
the NFS server daemon. The clients.config file distributed with HDSware
Version 3.1 contains the necessary nfsd entry, which is:
hds.osExtension.nfsd.path: /FXUtilities/hds-fx/extensions/nfsd
Note: This nfsd entry in the clients.config file is On by default.
The ViewStation boot code does not support the floppy disk, so
it cannot be used for booting.
Local Floppy Filesystem Access
Files on the floppy appear in the /floppy1 directory in the
ViewStation's local file system. The ViewStation's ls, cat, and more
shell commands can be used to examine floppy files in the Console
window. For example: HDS> cd /floppy1
/floppy1
HDS> ls
total 132
1 test* 131 termcap*
HDS>
cat test
This is a small file on the HDS floppy.
HDS>
RCP (Remote Copy) Access
The ViewStation accepts remote copy requests to its floppy drive
issued by remote hosts. The remote copy command does not work from the
HDS shell.
The rcp remote copy command supports the standard Unix
filename wildcard matching for `*' and `?'. Metacharacters intended to
be interpreted on the ViewStation should be quoted using \, ", or `.
This is an rcp example, issued from a workstation (hdssun1),
to copy floppy files starting with the letter `t' from ViewStation
named "mshvs": hdssun1> rcp mshvs:/floppy1/t\* .
NFS (Network File Service) Access
To access the ViewStation's floppy files remotely using NFS, you
must mount the ViewStation's /floppy1 directory using the `mount'
command.
The following command mounts the floppy drive attached to the
ViewStation called "mshvs" to a file location called /tmp/vsfloppy:
(check the syntax on your NFS system) mount -o
rw,intr,wsize=6144,timeo=1200 mshvs:/floppy1 /tmp/ vsfloppy
Note:
1. The /tmp/vsfloppy directory must exist before issuing the mount
command.
2. The timeout argument, timeo=1200, is important since the floppy
drive is a slow I/O device. With the timeout argument, the NFS client
waits longer before resending requests, which allows the floppy drive
time to complete the requests.
3. The write size argument, wsize=6144, is important since it
reduces the size of the NFS write requests sent to the ViewStation. If
too many large requests are sent too quickly, the ViewStation will lose
the requests. The NFS client may think the NFS server is having
problems and display a message like:
NFS server <ViewStation>
not responding
There will be a noticeable pause before the NFS client
retries, at which time you may see a message like: NFS
server <ViewStation> ok
4. The floppy filesystem should be unmounted before
powering down the ViewStation, such as: umount
/tmp/vsfloppy
Otherwise, processes on the workstation may get "stuck"
when performing operations that want access to the floppy filesystem
mount, such as `df'.
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