HPUX bif[4]

 bif(4)                      Series 300/400 Only                      bif(4)





 NAME
      bif - Bell Interchange Format utilities

 DESCRIPTION
      BIF (Bell Interchange Format) is the name given to the format of
      mounted media used by HP 9000 Series 200 HP-UX releases 2.0 and 2.1,
      and by the HP Integral Personal Computer.  This format is based upon
      that used in AT&T System III UNIX.

      The BIF utilities listed under SEE ALSO below are provided for non-
      Series 200 (revision 2.0 and 2.1) and non-Integral Personal Computer
      access to the BIF media.  These utilities read and write data to and
      from BIF volumes, as well as retrieve and store information on BIF
      volumes.

      The BIF utilities listed below are the only HP-UX utilities that
      recognize the internal contents of a BIF volume. To the rest of HP-UX,
      a BIF volume is simply a file or disk containing unspecified data.
      Therefore, do not use mount on a BIF volume; the operating system
      cannot recognize it.

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

      /dev/rdsk/1s0:/users/ivy
                              specifies BIF file /users/ivy on HP-UX device
                              special file /dev/rdsk/1s0

      Note that this file naming convention is applicable only for use as
      arguments to the BIF utilities and does not constitute a legal path
      name for any other use within the HP-UX operating environment.  Shell
      (see sh(1)) ``meta'' characters *, ?, and [...] do not work for
      specifying an arbitrary pattern for file-name matching when using BIF
      utilities.

      If the device name and a trailing colon are specified without a file
      or directory name following, as in /dev/rdsk/1s0:, the root (/) of the
      BIF file system is assumed by convention.

      A primitive form of data protection is provided by a lockfile
      /tmp/BIF..LCK that only allows one process and its immediate children
      to use the BIF utilities at any given time.

 AUTHOR
      bif utilities were developed by HP.

 SEE ALSO
      bifchmod(1), bifchown(1), bifcp(1), bifdf(1M), biffind(1),
      biffsck(1M), biffsdb(1M), bifls(1), bifmkdir(1), bifmkfs(1M),
      bifrm(1).



 Hewlett-Packard Company            - 1 -     HP-UX Release 9.0: August 1992