ADDBADSEC(8) Maintenance Commands and Procedures ADDBADSEC(8)

NAME

addbadsec - map out defective disk blocks

SYNOPSIS

addbadsec [-p] [-a blkno [blkno]...] [-f filename] raw_device

DESCRIPTION

addbadsec is used by the system administrator to map out bad disk
blocks. Normally, these blocks are identified during surface
analysis, but occasionally the disk subsystem reports unrecoverable
data errors indicating a bad block. A block number reported in this
way can be fed directly into addbadsec, and the block will be
remapped. addbadsec will first attempt hardware remapping. This is
supported on SCSI drives and takes place at the disk hardware level.
If the target is an IDE drive, then software remapping is used. In
order for software remapping to succeed, the partition must contain
an alternate slice and there must be room in this slice to perform
the mapping.


It should be understood that bad blocks lead to data loss. Remapping
a defective block does not repair a damaged file. If a bad block
occurs to a disk-resident file system structure such as a superblock,
the entire slice might have to be recovered from a backup.

OPTIONS

The following options are supported:

-a
Adds the specified blocks to the hardware or software map. If
more than one block number is specified, the entire list should
be quoted and block numbers should be separated by white space.


-f
Adds the specified blocks to the hardware or software map. The
bad blocks are listed, one per line, in the specified file.


-p
Causes addbadsec to print the current software map. The output
shows the defective block and the assigned alternate. This
option cannot be used to print the hardware map.

OPERANDS

The following operand is supported:

raw_device
The address of the disk drive (see FILES).

FILES

The raw device should be /dev/rdsk/c?[t?]d?p0. See disks(8) for an
explanation of SCSI and IDE device naming conventions.

SEE ALSO

attributes(7), disks(8), diskscan(8), fdisk(8), fmthard(8), format(8)

NOTES

The format(8) utility is available to format, label, analyze, and
repair SCSI disks. This utility is included with the addbadsec,
diskscan(8), fdisk(8), and fmthard(8) commands available for x86. To
format an IDE disk, use the DOS "format" utility; however, to label,
analyze, or repair IDE disks on x86 systems, use the Solaris
format(8) utility.

February 24, 1998 ADDBADSEC(8)