More on setting-up Sun3 from tape

From: Frank McConnell <fmc_at_reanimators.org>
Date: Mon Mar 23 20:15:18 1998

"Richard A. Cini" <rcini_at_email.msn.com> wrote:
> Well, I resolved the tape drive access problem on my Sun3 workstation.
> Although no other device on the SCSI chain is terminated, the Sun3 does not
> like the DD50 passive terminator that I have on the end of the chain; it
> will only access the drives on the chain without it.

This may be one of those wacky things that crops up w/r/t funny things
Sun does with the termination-power line on the bus, or a tape drive
that terminates the bus itself (or on the MT02 card if that's how the
tape drive is hooked up).

> start c/t/s blks c/t/s
> type
> a(root) 0 0/0/0 29297 61/00/17 4.2BSD /* 15mb
> boot
> b(swap) 0 0/0/0 0 0/0/0 swap /*
> swap (would like this to be ~10mb)
> c(disk) 0 0/0/0 601920 1254/0/0 unused /* disk
> d(user) 0 0/0/0 0 0/0/0 unused
> /* user

> I can create the root partition (and write it to the disk as shown
> above) with no problem, but I cannot create the swap and user partitions. I
> get the following error: "ioctl DIOCWDINFO: invalid argument".

I'm not sure what edlabel is, but if you are running SunOS, there
should be a program called format that has a "partition" command
that lets you set the individual partitions. Once you get into
partition mode, you type the letter of the partition you want to
set, and it prompts you for a start and a length. Lather,
rinse, repeat until done. Then you need to write the disk label
to the disk.

Convention is that the c partition is set to cover the whole disk.
You don't actually newfs or mount it, it's just there for things to
look at. (Does anything actually depend on this any more? I don't
know.)

So I'm guessing you want to set partition b to start at 29297 and
be length 20480 (for 10MB, are you sure that is enough), and
partition d to start at (29297+20480=) 49777 and be length
(601920-49777=) 552143.

Or am I missing something here?

-Frank McConnell
Received on Mon Mar 23 1998 - 20:15:18 GMT