Chapter 1 Managing Removable Media (Overview)

This chapter provides general guidelines for managing removable media in the Solaris OS.

This is a list of the overview information in this chapter.

• What's New in Removable Media?

• Where to Find Managing Removable Media Tasks

• Removable Media Features and Benefits

• Comparison of Manual and Automatic Mounting

• Overview of Accessing Removable Media

What's New in Removable Media?

The following section describes new removable media features in the Solaris release.

• vold is Managed by the Service Management Facility (SMF)

• Improvements to Volume Management (vold)

For a complete listing of new Solaris features and a description of Solaris releases, see Solaris 10 What’s New.

vold is Managed by the Service Management Facility (SMF)

Solaris 10 1/06: The volume management daemon, vold, is now managed by the Service Management Facility (SMF). This means you can use the svcadm disable command to disable the following new volfs service, if appropriate:

# svcadm disable volfs

You can identify the status of the volfs service by using this command:

$ svcs volfs
STATE          STIME    FMRI
online         Sep_29   svc:/system/filesystem/volfs:default

For more information, see smf(5).

You can use the svccfg command to display and to set additional vold properties. For example, you could temporarily enable vold logging to help troubleshooting a problem. For example:

# svccfg
svc:> select system/filesystem/volfs
svc:/system/filesystem/volfs> setprop vold/log_debuglevel=3
svc:/system/filesystem/volfs> exit
# svcadm disable volfs
# svcadm enable volfs

You can also use the svccfg command to display a listing of settable vold properties.

# svccfg
svc:> select volfs
svc:/system/filesystem/volfs> listprop vold/*
vold/config_file            astring  
vold/log_debuglevel         count    3
vold/log_file               astring  
vold/log_nfs_trace          boolean  false
vold/log_verbose            boolean  false
vold/root_dir               astring  
vold/never_writeback_label  boolean  false
svc:/system/filesystem/volfs> exit

For a description of these properties, see the vold(1M).

Improvements to Volume Management (vold)

Solaris 10 1/06: Removable media management is improved. Previously, vold did not create device links for removable devices that contain no media. Now, device links are properly created for devices that contain no media, similar to the following:

lrwxrwxrwx   1 root     root     28 Jun 13 13:09 /vol/dev/aliases/cdrom0 ->
 /vol/dev/rdsk/c2t2d0/nomedia

Now, you can use the cdrw and rmformat commands to list devices that have no media when vold is running.

You can revert back to the previous vold behavior by changing the following support nomedia entry in the /etc/vold.conf file as follows:

support media

Then, restart vold. For more information, see vold.conf(4).

In addition, vold is now hot-plug aware. This improvement means that if you insert removable media, the media is automatically detected and mounted by vold. There should be no need to restart vold manually to recognize and mount a file system from any removable media device.

If you are using a legacy or non-USB diskette device, then you might need to issue the volcheck command before vold can recognize the media.

If the media is detected, but for some reason, is unmounted, then you'll need to run the following commands:

# volrmmount -i rmdisk0

Before you hot-remove a removable media device, eject the media first. For example:

# eject rmdisk0

Where to Find Managing Removable Media Tasks

Use these references to find step-by-step instructions for managing removable media.

Removable Media Features and Benefits

The Solaris release gives users and software developers a standard interface for dealing with removable media. Removable media services provide the following benefits:

• Automatically mounts removable media. For a comparison of manual and automatic mounting, see the following section.

• Enables you to access removable media without having to become superuser.

• Allows you to give other systems on the network automatic access to any removable media on your local system. For more information, see Chapter 3, Accessing Removable Media (Tasks).

Comparison of Manual and Automatic Mounting

The following table compares the steps involved in manual mounting (without removable media services) and automatic mounting (with removable media management) of removable media.

Overview of Accessing Removable Media

Essentially, removable media services enable you to access removable media just as manual mounting does, but more easily and without the need for superuser access.

If your system has more than one type of removable device, see the following table for their access points.