Re: How do I label a disk?

From: Andrew Gabriel (andrew_at_cucumber.demon.co.uk)
Date: 06/06/05 

Date: 06 Jun 2005 11:27:11 GMT

In article <MOVoe.14884$TR5.882@news.edisontel.com>,
        _moray <moray1.spam@yahoo.com> writes:
> I tried to label it with the format command:
> # format
> <select disk>
> format> label

and?

> I also tried adjusting the partitions with
> format> partition
> and then relabel it.

and?

> At the moment here is the output of format (partitions of the first disk):
>
> partition> print
> Volume: solaris
> Current partition table (original):
> Total disk sectors available: 35362115 + 16384 (reserved sectors)
>
> Part Tag Flag First Sector Size Last Sector
> 0 root wm 34 128.00MB 262177
> 1 swap wu 262178 128.00MB 524321
> 2 unassigned wm 0 0 0
> 3 unassigned wm 0 0 0
> 4 unassigned wm 0 0 0
> 5 unassigned wm 0 0 0
> 6 usr wm 524322 16.61GB 35362114
> 8 reserved wm 35362115 8.00MB 35378498
>
> partition>
>
>
>>
>> That command doesn't go anywhere near the disk, it
>> just creates an 8k file of nulls. Try:
>>
>> dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/rdsk/c0t0d0s2 bs=8k count=1
>>
>>
>
> # dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/rdsk/c0t0d0s0 bs=8k count=1
> WARNING: /pci@1f,4000/scsi@3/sd@0,0 (sd2):
> primary label corrupt; using backup
>
> 1+0 records in
> 1+0 records out

Well, I guess the disk isn't completely dead at least.

> And then? format still reports the same partition table, but it also says:
>
> selecting c0t0d0: solaris
> [disk formatted]
> Reading the primary EFI GPT label failed. Using backup label.
> Use the 'backup' command to restore the primary label.

> What are the steps to clean a disk so I can start over the installation?

Ah -- EFI label. I don't know off-hand where EFI stores its backup
label. (The VToC back labels are on the first sector of each track
on the last cylinder of the disk, using whatever virtual disk
geometry the disk is pretending to have.) You don't say which
Solaris release, but you might be hitting bugid 6237585 "Cannot
revert EFI labeled disk back to VTOC" for which there's a patch
119374.

However, yet again, nothing you actually posted shows any fault
at all, so I still don't actually know what your problem is. 

-- 
Andrew Gabriel

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