If you have BLANK disks, you must first format them. This can be done either on your own IBM PC or PS/2 home computers, or on most athena workstations. For information on how to do this, consult the stock answer entitled How to FORMAT FLOPPIES on Athena under the WORKSTATIONS topic.
Once the floppy is formatted, you can use the Mtool suite of commands to manipulate files on the disk. You will need to type
add consultonce at your athena prompt before you can access the commands. A brief summary is presented below.
Mtool MSDOS name equivalent Description mattrib ATTRIB change MSDOS file attribute flags mcd CD change MSDOS directory mcopy COPY copy MSDOS files to/from Unix mdel DEL/ERASE delete an MSDOS file mdir DIR display an MSDOS directory mformat FORMAT add MSDOS filesystem to a low-level format mlabel LABEL make an MSDOS volume label. mmd MD/MKDIR make an MSDOS subdirectory mrd RD/RMDIR remove an MSDOS subdirectory mread COPY low level read (copy) an MSDOS file to Unix mren REN/RENAME rename an existing MSDOS file mtype TYPE display contents of an MSDOS file mwrite COPY low level write (copy) a Unix file to MSDOSYou should be able to just close your eyes and pretend you're on an MSDOS system. Everything should work the same... except for the added m at the beginning of each command.
For example, to copy a file from the floppy to the current directory, you would type
mcopy a: filename filenameTo write a file to the floppy, you would type
mcopy filename a: filenameNot all of the mtool programs are supported on some types of workstations. To see which ones are available, type:
add consultThat will list all the mtools available, as well as some additional programs. For more information, type:
ls /mit/consult/$bindir/m*
add consultThe pattern matching routine more closely resembles Unix than MSDOS. For example, "*" matches all MSDOS files in lieu of "*.*".
man mtools
The use of wildcards (or the '
separator) will require the
names to be enclosed in quotes to protect them from the shell. For
example:
RIGHT: mcopy "a:*.c" .will copy all files on the A: disk with the extension .C to the current Unix directory.
WRONG: mcopy a:*.c .will cause the shell to expand a:*.c in the current Unix directory (which is probably not what you wanted) then copy that list of files (if there were any) from A: to the current Unix directory.
RIGHT: mcopy *.c a:will copy all files with the extension .c in the current Unix directory to the A: drive. (This time you want the shell the expand the *.c).
In addition to the mtools commands, the following may also be used on all public workstations except the Sun Sparc Classics to manipulate files. Note that if you want to use subdirectories on the diskette, that you will need to use the Mtools commands instead.
Command Usage dosdir Display MSDOS directory doswrite filename write filename to the floppy dosread filename copy filename to the current directoryFor more information on these commands type
man dosdir