How to use the Erasable-Optical Disk Drive

Before using the erasable-optical drive for the first time, you must see the system administrator!

Optical disks are two-sided. This means you will need to format both sides before use and you will need to flip the disk (and remount it) to access the second side. You can store approximately 520 Megabytes of data per side.

The erasable-optical disk drive (EOD Drive) is located on the machine bowditch. You will need to login to bowditch in order to manipulate the EOD drive. However, you do not need to be logged into bowditch to access (read from/write to) the disk. You can access the disk for reading and writing by cd'ing to /disks/optical. NOTE: you must mount the optical disk BEFORE attempting to cd to it.

Mounting the Optical Disk

To mount the optical disk, use the following command: 
eodmount /dev/eod0g /mnt
To see if the disk is mounted, do a df. You should get something similar to the following: 
Filesystem            kbytes    used   avail capacity  Mounted on
/dev/eod0g            622905       9  591751     0%    /mnt
NOTE: The numbers may be different and there will be other lines displayed. The important line is the one starting with /dev/eod0g.

Unmounting the Optical Disk

To unmount the optical disk, use the following command: 
eodmount  -u /dev/eod0g
NOTE: You cannot be using the optical disk, when you try to unmount it. "Using it" is defined as reading from, writing to, or currently cd'ed to the disk or to /disks/optical.

Ejecting the Optical Disk

To eject (remove) the optical disk drive, you must first unmount it. Then, use the following command to eject the disk. 
eodutil eod0 eject
You can also press the button on the drive to eject the disk.

Formatting the Optical Disk

Please see the system administrator before attempting to format a disk for the first time!

To format an optical disk use the following series of commands:

  1. eodutil eod0 format Actually formats the disk, this may take upto 30 minutes.
  2. eodutil eod0 label Creates a label for the disk, this is very quick.
  3. eod-newfs /dev/reod0g Creates the filesystem on the disk. This will take a few minutes.
NOTE: If you format an optical disk, you WILL ERASE ALL DATA ON THAT SIDE OF THE DISK!

Accessing the disk

Once an optical disk is mounted, you can access it by doing the following: 
cd /disks/optical
NOTE: You can access the disk for reading and writing from any machine on the network.
Press here to return to the Using Hardware Menu