test

System Administration Guide

Disk Slices

A slice is composed of a single range of contiguous blocks. It is a physical subset of the disk (except for slice 2, which customarily represents the entire disk). Before you can create a file system on a disk, you must format it and divide it into slices. See Part VII for complete information on installing and formatting disks, and dividing disks into slices.

A slice can be used as a raw device for swap space or to hold one UFS file system. A disk can be divided into as many as eight slices. See Part VII for a list of customary disk slice assignments.

This example shows disk information for /dev/dsk/c0t3d0. Note that the format command does not show slice information as part of the available disk selections. It shows the controller, target, and disk number for each disk.

Example 26-1 Using the format Command 


$ su
Password:
# format
AVAILABLE DISK SELECTIONS:
 0. c0t0d0 at scsibus0 slave 24
 sd0: <SUN0207 cyl 1254 alt 2 hd 9 sec 36>
 1. c0t3d0 at scsibus0 slave 0: veryloud
 sd3: <SUN0207 cyl 1254 alt 2 hd 9 sec 36>
Specify disk (enter its number): 1
FORMAT MENU:
 disk - select a disk
 type - select (define) a disk type
 partition - select (define) a partition table
 current - describe the current disk
 format - format and analyze the disk
 repair - repair a defective sector
 label - write label to the disk
 analyze - surface analysis
 defect - defect list management
 backup - search for backup labels
 verify - read and display labels
 save - save new disk/partition definitions
 inquiry - show vendor, product and revision
 volname - set 8-character volume name
 quit
format> partition
PARTITION MENU:
 0 - change `0' partition
 1 - change `1' partition
 2 - change `2' partition
 3 - change `3' partition
 4 - change `4' partition
 5 - change `5' partition
 6 - change `6' partition
 7 - change `7' partition
 select - select a predefined table
 modify - modify a predefined partition table
 name - name the current table
 print - display the current table
 label - write partition map and label to the disk
 quit
partition> print
Volume: veryloud
Current partition table (original sd3):
Part      Tag   Flag     Cylinders        Size       Blocks
  0       root    wm       0 - 39        14.06MB     (40/0/0)
  1       swap    wu       40 - 199      56.25MB    (160/0/0)
  2     backup    wm       0 - 1150     404.65MB   (1151/0/0)
  3 unassigned    wm       0               0          (0/0/0)
  4 unassigned    wm       0               0          (0/0/0)
  5          -    wm       0             10.20MB     (29/0/0)
  6        usr    wm       200 - 228    121.29MB    (345/0/0)
  7       home    wm       574 - 1150   202.85MB    (577/0/0
partition> quit
format> quit
#

If you know the disk and slice number, you can display information for a disk using the prtvtoc (print volume table of contents) command. You can specify the volume by specifying any non-zero-size slice defined on the disk (for example, /dev/rdsk/c0t3d0s2 for all of disk 3, or /dev/rdsk/c0t3d0s7 for the eighth slice of disk 3). If you know the target number of the disk, but do not know how it is divided into slices, you can show information for the entire disk by specifying either slice 2 or slice 0.