How to Repartition Disk Drives in a Diskset

The metaset(1M) command repartitions disk drives in a diskset so that a small portion of each disk drive is reserved in slice 7 for use by Solstice DiskSuite/Solaris Volume Manager software. The remainder of the space on each disk drive is placed into slice 0. To make more effective use of the disk drive, use this procedure to modify the disk layout. If you allocate space to slices 1 through 6, you can use these slices when you set up Solstice DiskSuite metadevices or Solaris Volume Manager volumes.

1. Become superuser on the cluster node.

2. Use the format command to change the disk partitioning for each disk drive in the diskset.

   When you repartition a disk drive, you must meet the following conditions to prevent the metaset(1M) command from repartitioning the disk drive.

   • Create slice 7 starting at cylinder 0, large enough to hold a state database replica (approximately 2 Mbytes).

   • Set the Flag field in slice 7 to wu (read-write, unmountable). Do not set it to read-only.

   • Do not allow slice 7 to overlap any other slice on the disk drive.

   See the format(1M) man page for details.

3. Define metadevices or volumes by using an md.tab file.

   Go to How to Create an md.tab File.