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System Administration Guide: Basic Administration

Identifying Disks on a System

Use the format utility to discover the types of disks that are connected to a system. You can also use the format utility to verify that a disk is known to the system. For information on using the format utility, see Chapter 35, The format Utility (Reference).

How to Identify the Disks on a System

  1. Become superuser or assume an equivalent role.

  2. Identify the disks that are recognized on the system with the format utility. 


    # format

    The format utility displays a list of disks that it recognizes under AVAILABLE DISK SELECTIONS.

Examples—Identifying the Disks on a System

The following format output is from a system with two disks.


# format
Searching for disks...done
AVAILABLE DISK SELECTIONS:
  0. c0t1d0 <SUN1.05 cyl 2036 alt 2 hd 14 sec 72>
     /iommu@f,e0000000/sbus@f,e0001000/espdma@f,400000/esp@f,800000/sd@1,0
  1. c0t3d0 <SUN1.05 cyl 2036 alt 2 hd 14 sec 72>
     /iommu@f,e0000000/sbus@f,e0001000/espdma@f,400000/esp@f,800000/sd@3,0
Specify disk (enter its number):

The format output associates a disk's physical and logical device name to the disk's marketing name, which appears in angle brackets <>. This method is an easy way to identify which logical device names represent the disks that are connected to your system. For a description of logical and physical device names, see Chapter 29, Accessing Devices (Overview).

The following example uses a wildcard to display the disks that are connected to a second controller.


# format /dev/rdsk/c2*
AVAILABLE DISK SELECTIONS:
  0. /dev/rdsk/c2t0d0s0 <SUN2.1G cyl 2733 alt 2 hd 19 sec 80>
     /io-unit@f,e0200000/sbi@0,0/QLGC,isp@2,10000/sd@0,0
  1. /dev/rdsk/c2t1d0s0 <SUN2.1G cyl 2733 alt 2 hd 19 sec 80>
     /io-unit@f,e0200000/sbi@0,0/QLGC,isp@2,10000/sd@1,0
  2. /dev/rdsk/c2t2d0s0 <SUN2.1G cyl 2733 alt 2 hd 19 sec 80>
     /io-unit@f,e0200000/sbi@0,0/QLGC,isp@2,10000/sd@2,0
  3. /dev/rdsk/c2t3d0s0 <SUN2.1G cyl 2733 alt 2 hd 19 sec 80>
     /io-unit@f,e0200000/sbi@0,0/QLGC,isp@2,10000/sd@3,0
  4. /dev/rdsk/c2t5d0s0 <SUN2.1G cyl 2733 alt 2 hd 19 sec 80>
     /io-unit@f,e0200000/sbi@0,0/QLGC,isp@2,10000/sd@5,0
Specify disk (enter its number):

The following example identifies the disks on a SPARC based system.


# format
AVAILABLE DISK SELECTIONS:
  0. c0t3d0 <SUN2.1G cyl 2733 alt 2 hd 19 sec 80>
     /iommu@0,10000000/sbus@0,10001000/espdma@5,8400000/esp@5,8800000/sd@3,0
Specify disk (enter its number):

The format output identifies that disk 0 (target 3) is connected to the first SCSI host adapter (espdma@...), which is connected to the first SBus device (sbus@0...). The output also associates both the physical and logical device name to the disk's marketing name, SUN2.1G.

The following example shows how to identify the disks on an IA based system.


# format
AVAILABLE DISK SELECTIONS:
  0. c0d0 <DEFAULT cyl 615 alt 2 hd 64 sec 63>
     /pci@0,0/pci-ide@7,1/ata@0/cmdk@0,0
  1. c0d1 <DEFAULT cyl 522 alt 2 hd 32 sec 63>
     /pci@0,0/pci-ide@7,1/ata@0/cmdk@1,0
  2. c1d0 <DEFAULT cyl 817 alt 2 hd 256 sec 63>
     /pci@0,0/pci-ide@7,1/ata@1/cmdk@0,0
Specify disk (enter its number):

The format output identifies that disk 0 is connected to the first PCI host adapter (pci-ide@7...), which is connected to the ATA device (ata...). The format output on an IA based system does not identify disks by their marketing names.

Where to Go From Here

Check the following table if the format utility did not recognize a disk.

Disk Problem 

To Solve the Problem 

Disk is newly added and you didn't perform a reconfiguration boot 

Go to Chapter 33, SPARC: Adding a Disk (Tasks) or Chapter 34, x86: Adding a Disk (Tasks).

Disk is a third-party disk 

Go to Creating a format.dat Entry.

Label was corrupted by a system problem, such as a power failure 

Go to How to Label a Disk.

Disk is not properly connected to the system 

Connect the disk to the system by using your disk hardware documentation.