FMTHARD(8) Maintenance Commands and Procedures FMTHARD(8)

NAME

fmthard - populate label on hard disks

SYNOPSIS

fmthard -d data | -n volume_name | -s datafile [-i]
/dev/rdsk/c?[t?]d?s2

DESCRIPTION

The fmthard command updates the VTOC (Volume Table of Contents) on hard
disks. One or more of the options -s datafile, -d data, or -n
volume_name must be used to request modifications to the disk label.
To print disk label contents, see prtvtoc(8). The /dev/rdsk/c?[t?]d?s2
file must be the character special file of the device where the new
label is to be installed. On x86 systems, fdisk(8) must be run on the
drive before fmthard.

If you are using an x86 system, note that the term `partition' in this
page refers to slices within the x86 fdisk partition on x86 machines.
Do not confuse the partitions created by fmthard with the partitions
created by fdisk(8).

OPTIONS

The following options are supported:

-d data
The data argument of this option is a string representing the
information for a particular partition in the current VTOC.
The string must be of the format part:tag:flag:start:size where
part is the partition number, tag is the ID TAG of the
partition, flag is the set of permission flags, start is the
starting sector number of the partition, and size is the number
of sectors in the partition. See the description of the
datafile below for more information on these fields.

-i This option allows the command to create the desired VTOC
table, but prints the information to standard output instead of
modifying the VTOC on the disk.

-n volume_name
This option is used to give the disk a volume_name up to 8
characters long.

-s datafile
This option is used to populate the VTOC according to a
datafile created by the user. If the datafile is - (a hyphen),
fmthard reads from standard input. The datafile format is
described below. This option causes all of the disk partition
timestamp fields to be set to zero.

Every VTOC generated by fmthard will also have partition 2, by
convention, that corresponds to the whole disk. If the input
in datafile does not specify an entry for partition 2, a
default partition 2 entry will be created automatically in VTOC
with the tag V_BACKUP and size equal to the full size of the
disk.

The datafile contains one specification line for each
partition, starting with partition 0. Each line is delimited
by a new-line character (\n). If the first character of a line
is an asterisk (*), the line is treated as a comment. Each
line is composed of entries that are position-dependent,
separated by white space and having the following format:

partition tag flag starting_sector size_in_sectors

where the entries have the following values:

partition
The partition number. Currently, for Solaris SPARC, a
disk can have up to 8 partitions, 0-7. Even though the
partition field has 4 bits, only 3 bits are currently
used. For x86, all 4 bits are used to allow slices
0-15. Each Solaris fdisk partition can have up to 16
slices.

tag The partition tag: a decimal number. The following are
reserved codes: 0 (V_UNASSIGNED), 1 (V_BOOT), 2
(V_ROOT), 3 (V_SWAP), 4 (V_USR), 5 (V_BACKUP), 6
(V_STAND), 7 (V_VAR), and 8 (V_HOME).

flag The flag allows a partition to be flagged as
unmountable or read only, the masks being: V_UNMNT
0x01, and V_RONLY 0x10. For mountable partitions use
0x00.

starting_sector
The sector number (decimal) on which the partition
starts.

size_in_sectors
The number (decimal) of sectors occupied by the
partition.

You can save the output of a prtvtoc(8) command to a file, edit
the file, and use it as the datafile argument to the -s option.

SEE ALSO

uname(1), attributes(7), format(8), installboot(8), prtvtoc(8)

x86 Only
fdisk(8)

NOTES

Special care should be exercised when overwriting an existing VTOC, as
incorrect entries could result in current data being inaccessible. As
a precaution, save the old VTOC.

For disks under two terabytes, fmthard cannot write a VTOC on an
unlabeled disk. Use format(8) for this purpose.

illumos March 30, 2022 illumos