Re: Does solaris require disks to be zeroed before using

From: Beardy (beardy_at_beardy.net)
Date: 09/25/04

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    Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2004 15:51:38 +0000

    Chris Newport wrote:
    > On Saturday 25 September 2004 7:17 am in comp.sys.sun.admin Beardy wrote:
    >
    >
    >>>The only case where Solaris needs a disk to be zeroed is
    >>>where an IDE disk has been installed on a system/OS version
    >>>which does not support large drives. In this case only the
    >>>boot block needs to be zeroed.
    >>>This was a common issue with the Ultra5/10 when a user installed
    >>>a large disk which was not correctly recognised.
    >>>
    >>
    >>Chris, I'm curious - didn't they just patch/upgrade the OS to support
    >>the large disk? I can't see how zeroing the boot block would help...
    >
    >
    > When you first initialise a disk, format writes a disk label to
    > cylinder zero. The size of the disk is contained in the label and
    > is believed from that point.
    >
    > This means that if you first initialise a disk with a version
    > of solaris which does not support large IDE drives the disk will
    > be recognised as being too small, even if you re-install the
    > correct version of solaris.

    The phrase "as being too small" fooled me for a while, but is what you
    mean "as being of an incorrect size, thus losing capacity available on
    the drive"?

    >
    > The only cure is to zero the disk label with dd and start again
    > using the correct solaris version.
    >

    If the answer to me previous question is "yes", then I understand;
    otherwise it must be Saturday.....

    Thanks.

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