SUMMARY - Raw disk partitions

From: Cindy Yoho (cindy@ddrsrv2.dny.rockwell.com)
Date: Tue Jun 13 1995 - 00:22:07 CDT


Thanks to everyone who responded, and to those yet to come...
This list is truly a blessing, relieving many a headache :)

Original question:

> Could anyone out there help me understand raw disk partitions or point me to a
> source for info? We have a situation where we want to use raw partitions for
> Sybase. When the system is booted, (Sun runninng 4.1.3) we get the message
>
> BAD MAGIC NUMBER
>
> for the sd3a partition, which is our "raw" partition.

Summary:

Answers pointed me to 3 specific issues.

        1. Make sure the sd0a partition is removed from /etc/fstab
                if you are trying to access it as a raw partition

        2. Do not do newfs on a raw partition.

        3. You cannot use cylinder 0 as the start cylinder of a raw partition,
                as cylinder 0 contains the disk label and partition info. To
                quote Richard Sands of Computervision, " Most uses of partitions on Suns (file system & swap) understand that this cylinder is
                special & will leave it alone, even though you have assigned
                it to their use. Sybase doesn't though, & will quite happily
                overwrite the disk label as soon as it's fired up." So you
                must define the partition to start at 1, instead of 0.

Thanks again guys!

Cindy



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