Configuring HP-UX For Peripherals

140 Chapter5
Configuring Disk Drives, Disk Arrays, and CD-ROM Drives
Planning to Configure a Disk Drive
• If using SAM, choose the action, Add -> Not Using LVM. LVM
functionality is not supported on floppy disks.
• Unlike HP hard disks, which are typically initialized before shipping,
you must initialize floppy-disk media, using the mediainit
command. See mediainit (1M) in the HP-UX Reference for
information.
• Do not use low-density floppy disks. Supported disk formats vary by
system model and are documented on the floppy (7) manpage.
• Floppy drives are supported on HP-UX primarily for transferring raw
data. Thus, commands such as tar can be used effectively with floppy
disks. You must know in what format your media is written.
• In some respects, using a floppy disk drive on an HP-UX system
differs significantly from using a floppy disk drive on a personal
computer:
— Unlike personal-computer floppies, you can make a file system on
an HP-UX floppy disk. Use newfs to create the file system.
Consult /etc/disktab to choose an entry (for example, ibm1440)
appropriate for the capacity of the floppy disk.
To access a file system on a floppy disk, you must mount it first.
— Media removal and replacement while the device is open is not
supported. A floppy disk containing a mounted file system must
not be removed prior to being unmounted. Removal of floppy disks
while the device is open is likely to result in file system errors and
system crashes.
— If an application requires that you insert and remove media while
the program is running, the floppy disk should work properly.