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System Administration Guide: Devices and File Systems     Oracle Solaris 10 1/13 Information Library
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Document Information

Preface

1.  Managing Removable Media (Overview/Tasks)

2.  Writing CDs and DVDs (Tasks)

3.  Managing Devices (Tasks)

4.  Dynamically Configuring Devices (Tasks)

5.  Managing USB Devices (Tasks)

6.  Using InfiniBand Devices (Overview/Tasks)

7.  Managing Disks (Overview)

What's New in Disk Management?

Advanced Format Disk Support

Where to Find Disk Management Tasks

Overview of Disk Management

Disk Terminology

About Disk Labels

EFI (GPT) Disk Label

Comparison of the EFI Label and the VTOC Label

Restrictions of the EFI Disk Label

x86: Support for EFI-Labeled Disks

Managing Disks With EFI Labels

Troubleshooting Problems With EFI Disk Labels

About Disk Slices

Using Raw Data Slices

format Utility

When to Use the format Utility

Guidelines for Using the format Utility

Formatting a Disk

Partitioning a Disk

Partition Table Terminology

Displaying Partition Table Information

Using the Free Hog Slice

8.  Managing Disk Use (Tasks)

9.  Administering Disks (Tasks)

10.  SPARC: Setting Up Disks (Tasks)

11.  x86: Setting Up Disks (Tasks)

12.  Configuring Oracle Solaris iSCSI Targets (Tasks)

13.  The format Utility (Reference)

14.  Managing File Systems (Overview)

15.  Creating and Mounting File Systems (Tasks)

16.  Configuring Additional Swap Space (Tasks)

17.  Checking UFS File System Consistency (Tasks)

18.  UFS File System (Reference)

19.  Backing Up and Restoring UFS File Systems (Overview/Tasks)

20.  Using UFS Snapshots (Tasks)

21.  Copying Files and File Systems (Tasks)

22.  Managing Tape Drives (Tasks)

23.  UFS Backup and Restore Commands (Reference)

Index

Partitioning a Disk

The following information is described in this section:

The format utility is most often used by system administrators to partition a disk. The steps are as follows:

The easiest way to partition a disk is to use the modify command from the partition menu of the format utility. The modify command enables you to create partitions by specifying the size of each partition, without having to keep track of the starting cylinder boundaries. The modify command also keeps tracks of any disk space that remains in the “free hog” slice.

Partition Table Terminology

An important part of the disk label is the partition table. The partition table identifies a disk's slices, the slice boundaries (in cylinders), and the total size of the slices. You can display a disk's partition table by using the format utility. The following table describes partition table terminology.

Table 7-3 Partition Table Terminology

Partition Term
Value
Description
Number
0–7
VTOC – Partitions or slices, numbered 0–7.

EFI – Partitions numbered 0–6.

Tag
0=UNASSIGNED 1=BOOT 2=ROOT 3=SWAP 4=USR 5=BACKUP 7=VAR 8=HOME 11=RESERVED
A numeric value that usually describes the file system mounted on this partition.
Flags
wm
The partition is writable and mountable.
wu rm
The partition is writable and unmountable. This state is the default for partitions that are dedicated for swap areas. (However, the mount command does not check the “not mountable” flag.)
rm
The partition is read only and mountable.

Partition flags and tags are assigned by convention and require no maintenance.

For more information about displaying the partition table, see the following references:

Displaying Partition Table Information

The following format utility output shows an example of a partition table from a 74-GB disk with a VTOC label displayed:

Total disk cylinders available: 38756 + 2 (reserved cylinders)

Part      Tag    Flag     Cylinders         Size            Blocks
  0       root    wm       3 -  2083        4.00GB    (2081/0/0)    8390592
  1       swap    wu    2084 -  3124        2.00GB    (1041/0/0)    4197312
  2     backup    wm       0 - 38755       74.51GB    (38756/0/0) 156264192
  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                0         (0/0/0)             0
  7       home    wm    3125 - 38755       68.50GB    (35631/0/0) 143664192
  8       boot    wu       0 -     0        1.97MB    (1/0/0)          4032
  9 alternates    wu       1 -     2        3.94MB    (2/0/0)          8064

partition> 

The partition table that is displayed by the format utility contains the following information.

Column Name
Description
Part
Partition or slice number. See Table 7-3 for a description of this column.
Tag
Partition tag. See Table 7-3 for a description of this column.
Flag
Partition flag. See Table 7-3 for a description of this column.
Cylinders
The starting and ending cylinder number for the slice. Not displayed on EFI-labeled disks.
Size
The slice or partition size in MB.
Blocks
The total number of cylinders and the total number of sectors per slice. Not displayed on EFI-labeled disks.
First Sector
EFI – The starting block number. Not displayed on VTOC-labeled disks.
Last Sector
EFI – The ending block number. Not displayed on VTOC-labeled disks.

The following is an example of an EFI disk label displayed by using the prtvtoc command.

# prtvtoc /dev/rdsk/c4t1d0s0
* /dev/rdsk/c4t1d0s0 partition map
*
* Dimensions:
*     512 bytes/sector
* 2576941056 sectors
* 2576940989 accessible sectors
*
* Flags:
*   1: unmountable
*  10: read-only
*
*                           First     Sector    Last
* Partition  Tag  Flags     Sector     Count    Sector   Mount Directory
       0      2    00          34   629145600  629145633
       1      4    00   629145634   629145600 1258291233
       6      4    00  1258291234  1318633404 2576924637
       8     11    00  2576924638       16384 2576941021

The output of the prtvtoc command provides information in the following three sections:

prtvtoc Column Name
Description
Partition
Partition or slice number. For a description of this column, see Table 7-3.
Tag
Partition tag. For a description of this column, see Table 7-3.
Flags
Partition flag. For a description of this column, see Table 7-3.
First Sector
The first sector of the slice or partition.
Sector Count
The total number of sectors in the slice or partition.
Last Sector
The last sector of the slice or partition.
Mount Directory
The last mount point directory for the file system.

Using the Free Hog Slice

When you use the format utility to change the size of one or more disk slices, you designate a temporary slice that will expand and shrink to accommodate the resizing operations.

This temporary slice donates, or “frees,” space when you expand a slice, and receives, or “hogs,” the discarded space when you shrink a slice. For this reason, the donor slice is sometimes called the free hog.

The free hog slice exists only during installation or when you run the format utility. There is no permanent free hog slice during day-to-day operations.

For information on using the free hog slice, see SPARC: How to Create a Disk Slice for a ZFS Root File System or x86: How to Create a Disk Slice for a ZFS Root File System.