Changing Floppies
Gary Shannon
files. But when I switch floppies and do ls I still get the old directory
from the previous floppy. What magic incantation makes Linux realize I
really want ls from the new floppy and not from what it remembers it used to
be? Something like clicking "refresh" under Windows.
--gary
--
-=<@>=-=<@>=-=<@>=-=<@>=-
Te audire no possum.
Musa sapientum fixa est in aure.
-=<@>=-=<@>=-=<@>=-=<@>=-
Kevin
You can't just magically pop floppies in and out. Put one in, mount it,
read it, unmount it, take it out...repeat.
Kosh Vader
like mdir, mcopy, mformat, etc. They are provide most DOS-like disk
functions, and don't require mounting and umounting of floppies. Very
useful to have. For example,
(1) To get a directory listing of what is on the floppy
mdir a:
(2) To change a directory on the floppy
mcd a:/<directory>
(3) To copy a file, or set of files, to and from the floppy and
some directory on your system
mcopy a:<filename> /to/some/directory
mcopy a:*.* /to/some/directory
mcopy /to/some/directory/<filename> a:
mcopy /to/some/directory/* a:
(4) To delete a file, or set of files, on the floppy
mdel a:<filename>
mdel a:*.*
(5) To move a file, or set of files, to and from the floppy and
some directory on your system
mmove a:<filename> /to/some/directory
mmove a:*.* /to/some/directory
mmove /to/some/directory/<filename> a:
mmove /to/some/directory/* a:
(6) To format a floppy disk
mformat a:
Chris
Bill Unruh
]I have a stack of floppies that I was browsling through looking for some old
]files. But when I switch floppies and do ls I still get the old directory
]from the previous floppy. What magic incantation makes Linux realize I
]really want ls from the new floppy and not from what it remembers it used to
]be? Something like clicking "refresh" under Windows.
What distribution?
if not mandrake, do umount /mnt/floppy, followed by mount /mnt/floppy
José Arango
> I have a stack of floppies that I
Hello Gary!
Wow, you're still having problems with floppies ah? I haven't used a floppy
for more than a year I think! Yes, I'm from the new wave...I know.
The thing is...why don't you buy a CD-RW drive and burn all those floppies
to a cd-rw disc? :)
José
DanH
Floppy, floppy, floppy...
Oh, that thing that I unplugged about a year ago and have never had need
of since? I remember those. What a pain in the rear. Why do people
use floppies? Ftp, sftp, scp, rcp the files to a holding computer and
pick them up from where you need them. Having your own domain/web
server comes in handy too.
Floppies don't hold much, go bad way too often and quickly. Why do
people use them? E-mail the stuff to yourself.
DanH
--
Air Cav Reference Board
http://www.cavalrypilot.com
UNIX - Not just for vestal virgins anymore
Joseph Haig
> I have a stack of floppies that I was browsling through looking for some old
> files. But when I switch floppies and do ls I still get the old directory
> from the previous floppy. What magic incantation makes Linux realize I
> really want ls from the new floppy and not from what it remembers it used to
> be? Something like clicking "refresh" under Windows.
>
> --gary
Someone else has explained about the m-tools, so I will not repeat it
here. However, I think it should be pointed out that you should not
remove a floppy without properly unmounting it. If you do you risk
losing data or corrupting files on the disk. The reason for this is
that when you write to a file on the floppy, Linux does not always
immediately write it but may rather wait until it is doing little else
and it can write without you noticing. This means that you *must*
tell Linux when you intend to take the disk out so that it can write
any pending data. With Windows, by comparison, if you write to a
floppy, the data is written immediately. This allows you to remove
and replace floppies at will but the downside is that the machine
hangs for a few seconds every time you try to save a large file. The
m-tools are basically an emulation of how Windows works and are useful
for quickly looking at disks but not really for doing serious work.
To mount a floppy, type 'mount /floppy' at the command prompt and to
unmount, type 'umount /floppy'. If you are using KDE, you can also do
this by right-clicking on the floppy icon on the desktop.
Bye,
Joe
King Nothing
> Gary Shannon wrote:
>
>> I have a stack of floppies that I
>
>
> Hello Gary!
>
> Wow, you're still having problems with floppies ah? I haven't used a
> floppy for more than a year I think! Yes, I'm from the new wave...I know.
I must be from the old wave then...I have a 5.25" floppy drive.
> The thing is...why don't you buy a CD-RW drive and burn all those floppies
> to a cd-rw disc? :)
Floppies are easier to use and reuse, especially in Linux, compared to the
difficulty of using CD-RW in Linux.
--
Kris aka Ogden Computer Guy
I'm not a Black Hat; I'm not a White Hat. I'm a Red Hat :-)
9/11/2001
Gary Shannon
"José Arango" <ara...@caribe.net> wrote in message
news:tvmes9r...@corp.supernews.com...
There not worth burning to CD. It's a bunch of old floppies that have some
C code on them. They are left over from back when I was still running a
486. I was going to save the files worth saving and trash the rest of them.
--gary
Gary Shannon
"Kevin" <wick...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:pan.2001.11.20.17...@hotmail.com...
> On Tue, 20 Nov 2001 16:41:36 -1000, Gary Shannon wrote:
<snip>
>
>
> You can't just magically pop floppies in and out. Put one in, mount it,
> read it, unmount it, take it out...repeat.
How quaint! Why is an OS that's as good as Linux so stone-age in some ways?
--gary
Joachim Feise
That depends. If you are using DOS-formatted floppies, you can of course use
the mtools and then you can pop floppies in and out freely.
Only if you mount floppies you should not take them out until they are unmounted.
Different concepts, different requirements...
-Joe
Joost Kremers
it's the consequence of something that is not stone-age at all: doing
disk writes at intervals, rather than immediately. and exactly because
that is not very practical in the case of floppies, the mtools were
written. so you have choice again... ;-)
--
Joost Kremers
registered Linux user #230173
Life has its moments
Armin Braun
Gary Shannon schrieb:
>
> "Kevin" <wick...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:pan.2001.11.20.17...@hotmail.com...
> > You can't just magically pop floppies in and out. Put one in, mount it,
> > read it, unmount it, take it out...repeat.
>
> How quaint! Why is an OS that's as good as Linux so stone-age in some ways?
Due to the reasons Joseph Haig tried to explain in this thread. Didn't
you read all of the responses?
And btw: "stone-age" is not quite the exact word for that :-)
Cheers,
Armin
--
| Armin Braun Karlsruhe University of applied sciences, Germany
| E-Mail: armin...@segelkunstflug.de
| To err is human - to really f*** up requires root.
Bill Unruh
]"Kevin" <wick...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
It is more "foolproof".
Note that this is what all operating systems
must do. Only some of them will try to use a heuristic to discover when
to mount and unmount.
Note that if you use mtools, you do not need to mount to a file system.
John Hasler
> If you are using DOS-formatted floppies, you can of course use the mtools
> and then you can pop floppies in and out freely. Only if you mount
> floppies you should not take them out until they are unmounted.
Or you can install an automounter. Mtools is the way to go, though.
--
John Hasler
jo...@dhh.gt.org
Dancing Horse Hill
Elmwood, Wisconsin
Gary Shannon
"Joachim Feise" <jfe...@ics.uci.edu> wrote in message
news:3BFC1135...@ics.uci.edu...
Ah, yes. mtools. Sure wish my RPM would let me install it. I know it's on
the distro CD but Gnome rpm won't look at the CD no matter what I do to it.
--gary
> -Joe
Joost Kremers
>
>> That depends. If you are using DOS-formatted floppies, you can of course
> use
>> the mtools and then you can pop floppies in and out freely.
>> Only if you mount floppies you should not take them out until they are
> unmounted.
>> Different concepts, different requirements...
>>
>
> Ah, yes. mtools. Sure wish my RPM would let me install it. I know it's on
> the distro CD but Gnome rpm won't look at the CD no matter what I do to it.
you've been complaining about this several times now. i once explained
to you that you could use the command line to install the package, and
there has (IIRC) also been an offer to help you figure out what is
wrong with your gnoRPM. so *please* tell us what gnoRPM is doing wrong
exactly, tell us what error messages you get. (in order to see them,
you may have to start the program from a terminal window.) if you
don't, and if you refuse to use the command line to install, then
*please* quit complaining about the fact that you cannot install any
of the packages that we say will ease your life with linux.
Chris Ahlstrom
> Floppies are easier to use and reuse, especially in Linux, compared to the
> difficulty of using CD-RW in Linux.
What? CD-RW is easy in Linux!
Chris
--
Living large and loving Linux!
Chris Ahlstrom
> It is more "foolproof".
> Note that this is what all operating systems
> must do. Only some of them will try to use a heuristic to discover when
> to mount and unmount.
Yeah. Like the time I logged into my Win2000 system, and NT Explorer
kept asking me to stick in a floppy so it could display A: -- not
a good heuristic.
Once you get used to it, mount and unmount become automatic.
> Note that if you use mtools, you do not need to mount to a file system.
Chris
Gary Shannon
"Joost Kremers" <j.Xkr...@let.YkunZ.nl> wrote in message
news:slrn9vpe31.4...@catv0149.extern.kun.nl...
Thank you very much for your patience. This has been a very frustrating
experience for me.
There are no error messages from GnoRPM. There is simply no way to browse
the CD for packages. There is no menu item or button that will look at the
packages on the CD. I don't recall exactly what buttons are available, but
I will power down my Windows box, switch my monitor over to the Linux box
and boot it up and write it all down. One thing that strikes me is that I
learned Windows without resorting to the reams of paper I'm consuming with
handwritten notes containing cryptic command line things. I was very happy
to be rid of the command line when I moved from DOS to Windows and I'd
really rather avoid the command line wherever possible. It's too
error-prone for somebody like me with clumsly fingers. (proofreading this
post I corrected 15 typos!) So if gnoRPM won't do something that must be
done through the command line then gnoRPM is not ready for prime time yet.
And if I can't learn to type, then I'm not ready for command lines.
--gary
Joost Kremers
>
> There are no error messages from GnoRPM. There is simply no way to browse
> the CD for packages.
can you browse your hard disk looking for packages? if you can, my next
question would be: are you sure the cd is mounted? can you browse the
cd from some file manager?
i have never used mandrake, and only spent a day or two in gnome, so i
can't really give you any clear directions. however, in SuSE, there is
a config and installation utility (Yast) that you can use to install
the packages on the cd. (it mounts the cd itself, so you dont have to
do it.) i would imagine mandrake (i seem to remember you were using
mandrake. could also be RH...) has something similar.
> There is no menu item or button that will look at the
> packages on the CD. I don't recall exactly what buttons are available, but
> I will power down my Windows box, switch my monitor over to the Linux box
> and boot it up and write it all down. One thing that strikes me is that I
> learned Windows without resorting to the reams of paper I'm consuming with
> handwritten notes containing cryptic command line things.
mmm... you're a programmer, right? to be honest, i find it a bit
strange that you would be comfortable with C or any programming
language, but not with a linux command line... there is not much
difference. in fact, shell scripting *is* programming, using the linux
command line.
> I was very happy
> to be rid of the command line when I moved from DOS to Windows and I'd
> really rather avoid the command line wherever possible. It's too
> error-prone for somebody like me with clumsly fingers. (proofreading this
> post I corrected 15 typos!) So if gnoRPM won't do something that must be
> done through the command line then gnoRPM is not ready for prime time yet.
i have the feeling you just did not figure out how to use gnoRPM
yet. that's what's giving you problems...
Chris Ahlstrom
> There are no error messages from GnoRPM. There is simply no way to browse
> the CD for packages. There is no menu item or button that will look at the
> packages on the CD.
You have to be logged on as root, first.
That being said, GnoRPM is a little tricky in how it works.
Hack at it!
R. Pulver
Um, ok, get the bull's fat candles, the chalk, draw the pentagram...umm,
no really, go to your fstab file and look at it, you will see the syntax
for other mounted drives. It helped me. (It's in /etc on Mandrake, which
is based on Red Hat.) Also, the Minasi book I mentioned to you has a
pretty good section on mounting floppies. (This guy is considered THE NT
and PC guru, so he comes at Linux from a very strong Windows background
and approaches his explanations from a Windows users perspective knowing
how insane Linux seems to a novice).
Linux is/does EVERYTHING the hard way around, but when you start to get
it you see it's more of an assembly language way of doing things than a
high level language way of doing things. It's way more powerful and WAY
more aggravating. I'm learning to love Linux, now that I'm bald (from
tearing my hair out) and must wear a crash helmet (from banging my head
against the wall). It's a steep learning curve but you WILL get it. I
started to learn Linux back when Red Hat was 5.0. I got so frustrated I
screamed--a lot. Quit for 6 months. Went back. Quit. Went back. Quit.
Went back. I discovered Mandrake, which did some cool things like
automount my floppy and CD on installing the OS. I still think a
six-pack should be kept handy for learning Linux. But it's fun (well
after the head heals and the wall is repainted--all that blood!) to
learn the HARD way. (Geez, is there any other way with Linux?).
Dave
<fiz...@starband.net> wrote:
>Ah, yes. mtools. Sure wish my RPM would let me install it. I know it's on
>the distro CD but Gnome rpm won't look at the CD no matter what I do to it.
>
>--gary
>
Gary
You can browse the CD with the file manager in Gnome.
When you find the correct RPM (somewhere in /mnt/cdrom/Redhat/RPMS)
you can "right-click" on it and select either install or upgrade. NOTE
you must be running the file manager as root to install the package.
Dave
Gary Shannon
"Dave" <drje...@ihotmail.com> wrote in message
news:3c0262de...@198.99.146.10...
Very cool. Thank you. That's the kind of instructions I can remember
without having to write down lines and lines of alphabet soup on a piece of
scratch paper.
--gary