Solaris Common Messages and Troubleshooting Guide

Cause

After a power cycle, the machine comes up with error messages saying: corrupt label - label checksum failed or corrupt label - wrong magic number . format(1M) showed:

  0 unassigned    wm       0               0         (0/0/0)          0
  1 unassigned    wm       0               0         (0/0/0)          0
  2     backup    wm       0 - 5460        4.2G    (5460/0/0)   4154160
  3 unassigned    wm       0               0         (0/0/0)          0
  4 unassigned    wm       0               0         (0/0/0)          0
  5 unassigned    wm       0               0         (0/0/0)          0
  6 unassigned    wm       0 - 2730       2.1G       (0/0/0)          0
  7 unassigned 	  wm       2730-5460      2.1G       (0/0/0)          0

The disks were using raw partitions beginning at block 0 (cylinder 0).

The disk label (VTOC) is kept on the block 0 of cylinder 0. The label will eventually get overwritten by database programs using raw partitions if the raw partition begins at cylinder 0. (Unix filesystems avoid this area of the partition.)