On Mon, 30 Jul 2001, Charles R Wiles wrote:

> Pete (and mystery correspondent),

Ok, I own up.  I'm the mystery correspondent :-)

>   I for one didn't see the message your responding to, which suggests it
> was sent to you direct.

It was bounced by the list software.  Depending on the mood of my mail
server (well, ok the rewrite rules) outgoing mail can appear either as
From [log in to unmask] or From [log in to unmask]  The list took exception
to the latter form, so I've now changed my subscription options.

> Since this is a potentially interesting/useful discussion for other list
> members, it would be nice if all replies were sent to the entire list so
> that everyone can benefit any pearls of wisdom.  Don't be shy!  And
> anyway, it's not as if the volume on uk-nextstep-users these days is so
> high as to warrant avoidance of discussions to the list as a whole! :-/

Thanks Charles - here's the whole of the message:

On Mon, 30 Jul 2001, Pete French wrote:

> Just cusrious as to whether anybody else out there has a DVD-ROM drive
> attached to their OpenStep machine ?

I have a Panasonic LF-D101 DVD-RAM drive - the older 2.6/5.2Gb variety.

> I have recently acquired one, and
> was thinking about using it to store data. I;veno idea what the ative
> format for DVD data is ((UDF ? or is that just for video ?) but I am
> pretty certain that OpenStep wont understand it.

I think you're right on both counts here.

> On the other hand, what
> happens if I just create a 2.6GB IISO filesystem, write that to a DVD
>and insert that ? Wold that do the trick ?

I don't think so (by which I mean it didn't work when I last tried
something similar).

I don't know what the limit on ISO filesystems is, or even if there is
one, but I have a feeling any *local* OpenStep filesystem has to be <2Gb.
ISTR a DVD-RAM disk with a <2Gb FAT partition on it is rejected by
OpenStep.  Sadly i've never been able to write anything to DVD-RAM under
NS/OS using e.g. cdrecord, and raw-writing an ISO image didn't seem to
work either.  If only SCSI DVD-RAM drives reported their type as
"rewritable" instead of "cdrom".

> I will probably go ahead and try this experiment anyway just to see wat
> happens, but I was curious as to wether anyone else had done anything
> with DVD drives.

I'd be most interested in the results of your experiments.  One
possibility is to use vmount, Christian Starkjohann's excellent utility
which uses Linux filesystem code and the NS/OS NFS kernel interface to
allow mounting VFAT, NFS and lots of other filesystems.  The NFS interface
has no such size limitation, though I think vmount is limited to a 4Gb raw
device size.

Christian also wrote a very elegant NS/OS front-end to vmount called
"MountMe.app" which allows configurable auto-mounting of various removable
or even fixed disks.  This used to be a commercial product but it's now
freeware. See http://www.obdev.at for more details.  MountMe is even able
to interface with external utilities to translate filesystems in place of
vmount, so if you manage to get something working which understands UDF it
should be possible to integrate it.

I can read (but not write to) 650Mb Panasonic PD disks in my DVD-RAM drive
- even OpenStep formatted ones.

Good Luck,
Neville
--
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PS.  I know that I was wrong in stating that local filesystems have
to be less than 2Gb.  If I'd thought about it I'd have remembered that my
main OS4.2 box has a filesystem just less than 4Gb on it.