help retrieving files from SunOS 5.8

Hi,

I am trying to get a small amount of files off of a SunBlade 2000 running SunOS 5.8, but I'm having trouble finding a medium that will actually work. It is not networked, and it doesn't have a writable CD drive. My only options seem to be floppy disk and USB drive. However, when I insert a floppy disk and click Open Floppy, nothing happens, but sometimes (not every time for some reason) it asks me if I want to format the disk and I click yes (it gives me a couple of formatting options, I'm not exactly sure which one to pick; I would like to move them to a PC eventually) but nothing really seems to happen. The formatting window stays open and there doesn't really seem to be any progress. If I try to access the disk icon through the home folder, it opens as "unnamed disk" but says I do not have write privileges and cannot put anything on it. I apologize for being very new to this system, but do the disks have to be non-formatted disks to be used? I think the ones I have tried are preformatted. I have also tried to use a a USB thumb drive and an external hard drive, but haven't had any luck getting those recognized, either. In addition, nothing ever shows up under "Removable Media Manager" like I'd think it would. FYI everything I've tried thus far has been through the GUI, not the command line.

As a beginner I'm hoping that there's an easy fix and I just don't know what I'm doing. Thanks in advance for your advice,

Ryan

after inserting a floppy enter the command "volcheck". than try to access it under /floppy.

you can stop/start the volmgt daemon. then perform a mountall. use df k to see if it mounts your floppy.. if not use USB. do iostat -En to check your c#t#d#
then
mount -F pcfs /dev/dsk/c#t#d#s0:c /mnt
cd /mnt (see if its accessible)
cp your files to it.
then
cd /
umount /mnt

thanks for the advice guys,
I tried DukeNuke2's suggestion but still wasn't able to copy anything to the disk.

incredible,
I performed the start/stop on volmgt, did mount -a, but df k returned
df: (k ) not a block device, directory, or mounted resource.

I plugged in a USB thumbdrive and did iostat -En and it returned:

c0t6d0 - Toshiba DVD
c1t1d0 - SEAGATE ST373405FSUN72G (73 GB) (I'm not familiar with this system or what internal disks it has, so I'm assuming this is the hard drive) and
usb_sd0 - Seagate External Drive (0.00 GB) (this also listed Illegal Request: 46 whatever that is).

I'm not sure what directory usb_sd0 is in, since I tried mount -F pcfs /dev/dsk/usb_sd0s0:c /mnt and it returned not a file or directory (even though I'm not sure if that's the correct syntax since it isn't in c#t#d# format).

Any suggestions? Thanks for your time guys

btw, in /dev/usb/ there isn't anything referenced as usb_sd0, but there is a character device file called mass-storage0.

Obviously I'm new to this so I'm not sure whether that is helpful information or not.

it is "df -k"!

what have you done after inserting a floppy and enter the "volcheck" command? (btw. volmgt must be online for "volcheck" to work)

sorry about that, "df -k" lists the floppy as being mounted on /floppy/unnamed_floppy with 1423 Kb of free space, 0 used. After running volcheck, when I try to copy to the floppy through the command line (cp *file* /floppy/unnamed_floppy) it says there's no space left. If I try to do it through "open floppy" and drag the file into the window, it just says something like "cannot create...most common cause is permission..."

argh. any other tips?

looks fine for me... maybe the floppy uses a wrong fs?

sorry for my ignorance but what is "fs"?

Filesystem

so which format should I choose for the disk? My options are PCFS (DOS), UFS (UNIX), UDFS, and NEC DOS.

I'm just trying to copy files from the Sun that I will eventually put on another webserver via a network connection on a PC. I don't really know anything about those different filesystems so any suggestions?

Since this thread is about copying files to a floppy for transport to another system you should use pcfs (dos). That way, most OS's will be able to read the files off the floppy.