Adding a Third-Party Disk
The Solaris environment supports many third-party disks. However, you might need to supply either a device driver, a format.dat entry, or both for the disk to be recognized. Other options for adding disks are as follows:
If you are adding a SCSI disk, you might to try the format utility's automatic configuration feature. For more information, see "Automatically Configuring SCSI Disk Drives".
You might try hot-plugging a PCI, SCSI, or USB disk. For more information, see Chapter 26, Managing Devices (Tasks).
If the third-party disk is designed to work with standard SunOS-compatible device drivers, then creation of an appropriate format.dat entry should be enough to allow the disk to be recognized by the format utility. In other cases, you need to load a third-party device driver to support the disk.
Note - Sun cannot guarantee that its format utility will work properly with all third-party disk drivers. If the disk driver is not compatible with the Solaris format utility, the disk drive vendor should supply you with a custom format program.
This section discusses what to do if some of this software support is missing. Typically, you discover that software support is missing when you invoke the format utility and find that the disk type is not recognized.
Supply the missing software as described in this section, and then refer to the appropriate configuration procedure for adding system disks or secondary disks in Chapter 33, SPARC: Adding a Disk (Tasks) or Chapter 34, IA: Adding a Disk (Tasks).
Creating a format.dat Entry
Unrecognized disks cannot be formatted without precise information about the disk's geometry and operating parameters. This information is supplied in the /etc/format.dat file.
Note - SCSI-2 drives do not require a format.dat entry. The format utility automatically configures the SCSI-2 drivers if the drives are powered on during a reconfiguration boot. For step-by-step instructions on configuring a SCSI disk drive automatically, see "How to Automatically Configure a SCSI Drive".
If your disk is unrecognized, use a text editor to create an entry in format.dat for the disk. You need to gather all the pertinent technical specifications about the disk and its controller before you start. This information should have been provided with the disk. If not, contact the disk manufacturer or your supplier.
How to Create a format.dat Entry
Make a copy of the /etc/format.dat file.
# cp /etc/format.dat /etc/format.dat.gen
Modify the /etc/format.dat file to include an entry for the third-party disk by using the format.dat information that is described in Chapter 35, The format Utility (Reference).
Use the disk's hardware product documentation to gather the required information.
Automatically Configuring SCSI Disk Drives
The format utility automatically configures SCSI disk drives even if that specific type of drive is not listed in the /etc/format.dat file. This feature enables you to format, create slices for, and label any disk driver that is compliant with the SCSI-2 specification for disk device mode sense pages.
Other options for adding disks are:
If you are adding a SCSI disk, you might to try the format utility's automatic configuration feature. For more information, see "Automatically Configuring SCSI Disk Drives".
You might try hot-plugging a PCI, SCSI, or USB disk. For more information, see Chapter 26, Managing Devices (Tasks).
The following steps are involved in configuring a SCSI drive by using automatic configuration:
Shutting down the system
Attaching the SCSI disk drive to the system
Turning on the disk drive
Performing a reconfiguration boot
Using the format utility to automatically configure the SCSI disk drive
After the reconfiguration boot, invoke the format utility. The format utility will attempt to configure the disk and, if successful, alert the user that the disk was configured. For step-by-step instructions on configuring a SCSI disk drive automatically, see "How to Automatically Configure a SCSI Drive".
Here's an example of a partition table for a 1.3-Gbyte SCSI disk drive that was displayed by the format utility.
Part Tag Flag Cylinders Size Blocks 0 root wm 0 - 96 64.41MB (97/0/0) 1 swap wu 97 - 289 128.16MB (193/0/0) 2 backup wu 0 - 1964 1.27GB (1965/0/0) 6 usr wm 290 - 1964 1.09GB (1675/0/0) |
For more information on using SCSI automatic configuration, see Chapter 35, The format Utility (Reference).
How to Automatically Configure a SCSI Drive
Become superuser or equivalent role.
Create the /reconfigure file that will be read when the system is booted.
# touch /reconfigure
Shut down the system.
# shutdown -i0 -gn -y
-in
Brings the system down to init level 0, the power-down state.
-g30
Notifies logged-in users that they have n seconds before the system begins to shut down.
-y
Specifies that the command should run without user intervention.
The ok prompt is displayed after the system is shut down.
Turn off the power to the system and all external peripheral devices.
Make sure that the disk you are adding has a different target number than the other devices on the system.
You will often find a small switch located at the back of the disk for this purpose.
Connect the disk to the system and check the physical connections.
Refer to the disk's hardware installation guide for installation details.
Turn on the power to all external peripherals.
Turn on the power to the system.
The system boots and displays the login prompt.
Log back in as superuser or assume an equivalent role.
Invoke the format utility and select the disk that you want to configure automatically.
# format Searching for disks...done c1t0d0: configured with capacity of 1002.09MB 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): 1Type yes to the prompt to label the disk.
Typing y causes the disk label to be generated and written to the disk by SCSI automatic configuration.
Disk not labeled. Label it now? y
Verify the disk label.
format> verify
format> q