Date: Mon, 16 Oct 1995 10:35:48 +0930 (CST) From: Michael Smith <msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au> To: olsenc@smokey.ee.washington.edu (Clint Olsen) Cc: hardware@freebsd.org, questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: scsi(8) requested output here Message-ID: <199510160105.KAA05376@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au> In-Reply-To: <199510152322.QAA06660@smokey.ee.washington.edu> from "Clint Olsen" at Oct 15, 95 04:22:35 pm
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Clint Olsen stands accused of saying: > > This has nothing to do with the MD21; you can't edit a disklabel if > > there isn't one there yet. You'll have to write one out first. > > > > disklabel -w -r sd0 <random> > > It would be nice if somewhere this little fact was DOCUMENTED IN > THE FAQ!!!!! <------- CLUE CLUE CLUE It would actually be nice if someone would sponsor me a working holiday to write a _real_disk_editor_, or write one themselves. Hey, maybe with the experience fresh in your mind _YOU_ could write the FAQ entry? After all, they don't just magically appear, do they? 8) > You know, I really hate to bitch, but did it ever occur to anyone > that one might want to create a label by editing it first????? Yeah, about every other time I answer this question 8( > > Pick a label at random from /etc/disktab, and then use disklabel -e to > > correct it. > > Thanks for the heads up on this, but I would like to point out that > the above advice can cause problems. Just picking any old random > entry from disktab caused us no end of grief. You pretty much have > to get the values correct the first time you write the label because > disktab bitches when you try to relabel the disk (and will not let > you) when it happens to move the "c" partition significantly. Once > we were able to clobber the existing label, using dd, we were able > to rerun disklabel. We were forced to deal with the cryptic nonsense > of disktab. I've never had this problem; then again, I normally start with a small label and grow it, wheras I suspect you were starting with a big one and shrinking it. > So, is there a way to use scsi(8) commands to have a disk spew back > data about its physical characterstics (heads, sectors/track, blah > blah)? You want the BIOS parameters, not the (bogus) parameters that the disk will give you. > I just cannot imagine how much fun this would've been if I had > intended to split up the disk between DOS and FreeBSD. Trivial, once you understand what's going on. However, understanding what's going on is not a reasonable expectation, so something needs to be done. > -Clint -- ]] Mike Smith, Software Engineer msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au [[ ]] Genesis Software genesis@atrad.adelaide.edu.au [[ ]] High-speed data acquisition and [[ ]] realtime instrument control (ph/fax) +61-8-267-3039 [[ ]] My car has "demand start" -Terry Lambert UNIX: live FreeBSD or die! [[
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