RE: [MiNT] Mount and MiNT

["Julian Reschke" <reschke@muenster.de>]

> From: owner-mint@fishpool.com [mailto:owner-mint@fishpool.com]On Behalf
> Of Mario Becroft
> Sent: Friday, August 06, 1999 2:34 AM
> To: mint@fishpool.com
> Subject: [MiNT] Mount and MiNT
>
>
> I have been reading all the recent messages about mount under MiNT and I
> must say that I find it a bit difficult to see how many of these abstract
> discussions relate to real life.
>
> The floppy drive in my TT hasn't been working for about a year, but
> nevertheless I would be interested in an explanation of the following
> points.
>
> When I was using a 270 MB Syquest removable drive under MiNT, it was
> always a problem because although I would use sync before removing the
> disc, I always got error mesages on the screen after removing the disc, I
> can't remember the wording of the message now but it was something like
> "<something> not written out after drive invalidated." Despite this I
> seldom lost any data, but it is disconcerting. But maybe this is fixed in
> more recent MiNT versions.

In any case, it is either a problem with the particular sync.ttp that you
use, or a bug in the filesystem. It's not a conceptual problem.

> The next thing is, if I sync the disc, there is, as I understand it,
> nothing to prevent some program from still accessing the disc after the
> sync command is finished, but before I eject the disc. Whereas if the disc
> could be unmounted then this would prevent a program from accessing the
> disc between when it is unmounted and when the disc is ejected.

Then you just need a TTP -- say umount.ttp -- which syncs the filesystem,
ejects the medium and removes the drive bit. Bingo.

> You say, in answer to this, that if the cache is not flushed then the disc
> is locked, but I have yet to see a floppy disc drive on the Atari which
> can be locked!

I remember an early Mac emulator on the Atari which would start flashing the
drive and beeping if you removed an unsynced medium. This behaviour could be
implemented trough an XHDI driver for floppies, if you really want that...

> And what, then, happens if the disc is removed entirely? Under MiNT, every
> time I list the directory of drive U, either with ls or using the desktop,
> it takes quite a long time, during which the computer entirely ceases to
> respond to user input, while the non-existent disc is interrogated,

Which is

a) a problem of the program accessing U:, and

b) wouldn't be such a problem if MiNT would have background DMA.

> whereas surely if the disc could be unmounted then MiNT would know about
> the non-existence of the disc and not waste time trying to access it.

Nobody prevents you from removing the drive bit when you eject the disk.
Just write a program which does just that and call it umount.ttp.

> Also, what ever anyone may say it seems to me that using symbolic links to
> make different drives accessible from certain locations is imperfect.
> Maybe mounting drives at given locations is worse still, I do not know any
> deep technical reason for any of this, but merely what I observe in every
> day use of my TT under MiNT, namely that with symbolic links there are
> always two different paths that may reference the same directory, either
> the actual drive which it is on or else the path where the symbolic link
> is; and that depending on the program, accessing the parent directory may
> access one or the other of these two possible directories. To me this is
> confusing, especially for a user who is not familiar with the physical
> layout of the discs but merely wants to use the system in the usual way.
>
> I AM NOT proposing that I know anything about this, or what is better or
> worse, but rather I am merely stating what AS A USER I observe about MiNT.
>
> I hope it is of some relevance to the topic.
>
> --
> +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
> | Mario Becroft                * Tariland, New Zealand Atari User Group |
> | mb@tos.pl.net                * Atari Hardware Developments            |

> | http://www.ak.planet.gen.nz/~mario/ * Atari Serial Mouse Interface    |
> +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+


--
Julian F. Reschke (mailto:reschke@medicaldataservice.de)
MedicalData Service GmbH Münster, Germany