sdf(4)

NAME

sdf − structured directory format description

DESCRIPTION

SDF (Structured Directory Format) is the name given to the format of mounted media used by HP 9000 Series 500 HP-UX systems. This format is based upon the format used in Series 500 BASIC workstations.

Utilities listed under SEE ALSO below are provided for non-Series 500 access to SDF media. These utilities read and write data to and from SDF volumes, as well as retrieve information from an SDF volume.

The SDF utilities listed below are the only HP-UX utilities that recognize the internal contents of an SDF volume. To the rest of the HP-UX operating system, an SDF volume is simply a file containing unspecified data. Therefore, to access SDF media on any HP-UX system other than Series 500, mount(1M) cannot be used because the operating system cannot recognize it.

SDF file names are specified to the SDF utilities by concatenating the HP-UX path name for the SDF volume with the SDF file name, separating the two with a colon (:). For example,

/dev/rdsk/c5d1s2:/users/ivy

specifies SDF file /users/ivy within HP-UX device special file /dev/rdsk/c5d1s2

Note that this file naming convention is applicable only for use as arguments to the SDF utilities and does not constitute a legal path name for any other use within the HP-UX operating system. The shell wild-card characters *, ?, and [...] do not work for specifying an arbitrary pattern for matching SDF file names when using SDF utilities.

If the device name and a trailing colon are specified without a file or directory name following (for example /dev/rdsk/c5d1s2:), the root (/) of the SDF file system is assumed by convention.

Files cannot be created with the SDF utilities unless there is at least one free block of storage on the device.

Although Shared Resource Management (SRM) storage media implement the SDF file system, HP does not support the use of SDF utilities on SRM workstation storage media.

WARNINGS

SDF utilities are intended to be run on non-Series 500 HP-UX systems. If the SDF utilities are executed on a Series 500, however, do not run them on a disk that has a mounted file system on it.

AUTHOR

sdf(4) was developed by HP.

FILES

/tmp/SDF..LCK lock file for single user access

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