BW said:
I have a CD-ROM made for SunOS 4 (BSD based). I didn't want the
software on it (which is 20 years old),
but a sample dataset therein. I am unable to read it. Windows does
not see the CD. In Ubuntu, there
is a long error message - can't mount, wrong fs or bad superblock blah
blah.
I thought all CD used HSFS. Did SunOS use something different?
The CD has no blemishes - it had been stored in a dark dry place all
those years.
OK, in Ubuntu, go to Synaptic package manager, enter "disktype"
and try to install that small utility. On some versions of Ubuntu,
that will require enabling all the repositories then reloading
the package manager.
The actual source code is here. You could build it from source, but
if you try hard enough, it's a package in Synaptic.
http://disktype.sourceforge.net/
That program will scan hard drives (partition or whole disk), optical
discs (tell you what file systems are in usage), and so on. And attempt
to give you information on it.
disktype /dev/sda (might checm MBR and tell you the four primaries)
disktype /dev/sda1 (check first partition and tell you the type)
disktype some.iso (check a CD image, tell you what file system)
Ubuntu has support for obscure file systems. For example, there are
tools for handling MacOS file systems (HFS, HFSPlus). I was able, with
some effort, to bring over a sector-by-sector copy of my Macintosh hard drive,
and extract files from it. The package in that case, didn't
even "mount" the file system (so you don't get the traditional
random access as such). It was a very crude tool, which
allowed up to list things, makes a copy of a single item and so on.
But still very useful. Where I've had trouble though, is dealing
with FreeBSD partitions. I think you really need a BSD OS installed
on a system, to work with those. I don't think GParted will touch them.
Paul
