Friday, October 14, 2005

When did that get added?

I haven't used format to partition a disk by hand under Solaris for ages. Normally I set everything up at install time using jumpstart, and then prtvtoc and fmthard if I need to copy a partition table (if a disk fails and needs to be replaced, for example). So I happened to be working on a machine today, and was presented with:


partition> 4
Part Tag Flag Cylinders Size Blocks
4 unassigned wm 0 0 (0/0/0) 0

Enter partition id tag[unassigned]:
Enter partition permission flags[wm]:
Enter new starting cyl[0]: 14521
Enter partition size[0b, 0c, 14521e, 0.00mb, 0.00gb]:


Say what? What's this e thing? Well, it's what you expect - the end cylinder. Aha! My, this makes putting that last partition in so much easier. No more trying to calculate in your head how many cylinders are left...

(Looking at a couple of other machines, I think this got added in Solaris 9.)

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