Media subtest: The Media subtest selects all the partitions on the disk and runs either the ReadOnly test or the WriteRead test on all the partitions. The ReadOnly test is selected if any partition on the disk has a file system on it. The WriteRead test is selected if the disk is raw and unsafe testing is enabled. By default all the read and write operations are completed using the asynchronous I/O method.
![]() | Caution - Disk test can only recognize file systems that Solaris supports or recognizes. If the fstyp command on the disk partition reports the file system type as "Unknown", Disk test may write data to the partition if the safe testing is disabled. |
Disk test runs the ReadOnly test by default. To run the Write/Read test on the disks, you must enable the unsafe testing option. The Unsafe option should be used with care. Unsafe testing will overwrite existing data on the hard disks. If the unsafe testing is enabled, the test automatically selects all the partitions for running the Write/Read test. The selection is based on the following rules:
The disk should be raw.
No partition should have a file system on it.
The disk should not have an SVM or Veritas volume on it.
If any of the above conditions are not met, Disk test runs ReadOnly test on the disk partition. For more information about Unsafe test options.
File system subtest: The file system subtest verifies the disk file system integrity. The test auto detects all mounted disk partitions in the system and runs the file system subtest. On each mounted disk partition, the test will:
Create multiple threads.
Enable each thread to create new temporary test directories and test files under /<mount point>/Vts_Disk_Fileset.
Enable each thread to create a new test file and perform the default I/O operations.
Open/write/read/compare/close tests.
Delete all temporary test directories and files on completion.
By default, the File system subtest do not run on NFS mounted filesystems. To enable filesystem subtest on NFS mounted filesystems, you should update /etc/sunvts/conf/sunvts.conf file with the following entry.
NFS_Disk_Testing All=Enable
or
NFS_Disk_Testing <NFS mount path1>=Enable NFS_Disk_Testing <NFS mount path2>=Enable
You can use the cleanup option to remove the files left uncleaned by the Diskmedia test.
User patterns support for DiskTest: The diskmedia test supports user patterns in two different ways:
patternfile: The user can use this option to provide details of a pattern file. The diskmediatest reads the pattern files and prepares the pattern. The pattern file content will be read directly into the buffer without any change. The pattern file can be any of any file type. If the complete path of the pattern file is not specified, then by default the pattern file will be searched in the present working directory. The following is the syntax for specifying the pattern file.
patternfile= <filename>
where filename is the file containing the user patterns.
pattern: The user can use this option to specify the pattern to be used for write/write-read tests. By default the P0 pattern is enabled, if no option is specified. You can also specify, create, and write list of different patterns in the /etc/sunvts/conf/disk_io_pattern file.The following is the syntax for an user pattern entry.
Pattern_name:<space><name><pattern[hex value]>,<repetition>
where:
name: Is the pattern name.
pattern[hex value]: Is the pattern in hexadecimal format. The maximum value is 64 bits.
repetition: Is the number of occurences of a pattern. By default the value is 1.