UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hello all.

I want to copy multiple files to a floppy. My distr. version is Mandrake 8.0.

If i use [ cp file /dev/fd0 ] , all is ok and the file is copied to disk

If i use
[ cp file1 file2 /dev/fd0 ] , I receive an error stating that /dev/fd0 is not a directory. I understand that /dev/fd0 is not a directory.

Is there a way to copy multiple files to the floppy ?

If yes, how would you copy all files in a particular directory to a floppy ?

And if the floppy already contains a file, how can you add another file to the floppy without overwriting the existing files already on it?

Hi,

You must first mount the floppy in order to copy files to it.
I don't know if Mandrake has any easy way to automatically mount a floppy on demand with a click of a button or something like that. (I never used it before)

Generally I've always just done everything using UNIX commands from a command prompt.

Check out the mount(1) man pages for information.

-John

It is mounted. I can copy a single file to the floppy, but can not copy multlple files to it.

Where did you mount it to? /dev/fd0 is the device file... not a mount point.

a common example of a mount point would be like /mnt/floppy or something like that.

I mount the floppy with command:

mount /mnt/floppy

To see whats on the floppy i use:

cat /dev/fd0

If you mounted the floppy to /mnt/floppy, then cd to /mnt/floppy to see and manage files on the disk. You can copy, edit, rename, remove files from that directory to access the floppy.

Thanks, moving into the /mnt directory and working from there helped alot.

One strange thing though, the Linux book that i am reading specifically says to use
[cp file /dev/fd0 ] to copy a file to a floppy. Actually you need to use [cp file /mnt/floppy] and since
/mnt/floppy is a directory and /dev/fd0 is not; saving multiple files using just one command was allowed.

BTW, Mandrake graphical interface automatically mounts the floppy when you put it in. They call it 'supermount'