Re: tlug: Floppy mounts

[Rex Walters <rex@example.com>]

>>>>> Frank Bennett writes:  (on 24 Nov 98)

> Could be tastey information, this; it's been ages since I even
> used mtools.  It permits reads and writes, insertion and ejection
> of a floppy without mounting and unmounting, just like in DOS and
> Windows and that?  If so, that's _exactly_ what I'm after!  The
> students who use these terminals should notice no difference in
> the behaviour and handling of the floppy drive under Linux.
> Nothing new for them to learn means nothing new for me to teach.

<laugh>

I thought as much.  You definitely want to look at mtools, which you probably
already have installed.  The package includes several utilities (mcopy, mdel,
mdir, etc.) which do exactly what you would expect (and apparently desire).

By default in most versions of linux, only root has write access to /dev/fd?.
So if you want arbitrary users to be able to read/write files from floppy you
will either need to open the permissions on /dev/fd?, or you will need to
change the group ownership of the devices and make the mtools executables sgid
to that group (the latter option is more secure).

MUCH easier and more secure than fooling around with mounts.

Regards,
-- 
Rex
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