I'm trying to remove a label from a disk so I can relabel it - the
result of the 18/36 GB mix ups noted in another thread.

The disk has been put into a Sun which has a fully working boot disk, so
the disk that is behaving poorly is not mounted.

I've tried:

1) dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/rdsk/c2t5d0c2 count=16

That failed with an I/O error.

when I looked at the partition table, slice 2 was not 'backup'. In fact,
there was no 'backup' slice at all.

2) Picked analyze then setup from the format program, then configured
setup to not restore then label. i.e.

Restore disk label[yes]? no

Then I've run 'purge' to hopefully clear the label. That seems to have
no effect on the label.

3) Tried to set slice 2 to be 'backup' and start at sector 0, but are
unable to do that. The smallest sector number I can set the backup slice
to is 34.


partition> 2
Part      Tag    Flag     First Sector        Size        Last Sector
2     backup    wm                34      33.91GB         71116541

Enter partition id tag[backup]:
Enter partition permission flags[wm]:
Enter new starting Sector[34]: 0
`0' is out of range.
Enter new starting Sector[34]: 33
`33' is out of range.
Enter new starting Sector[34]: 34
Enter partition size[71116508b, 71116542e, 34724mb, 33gb, 0tb]: 71116508
b
partition> print
Current partition table (unnamed):
Total disk sectors available: 71116541 + 16384 (reserved sectors)

Part      Tag    Flag     First Sector        Size        Last Sector
0 unassigned    wm                 0          0              0
1        usr    wm            409634     200.00MB         819233
2     backup    wm                34      33.91GB         71116541
3 unassigned    wm                 0          0              0
4 unassigned    wm                 0          0              0
5 unassigned    wm                 0          0              0
6        usr    wm            819234      33.52GB         71116540
8 unassigned    wm                 0          0              0

partition> quit


FORMAT MENU:
disk       - select a disk
type       - select (define) a disk type
partition  - select (define) a partition table
current    - describe the current disk
format     - format and analyze the disk
repair     - repair a defective sector
label      - write label to the disk
analyze    - surface analysis
defect     - defect list management
backup     - search for backup labels
verify     - read and display labels
inquiry    - show vendor, product and revision
volname    - set 8-character volume name
!<cmd>     - execute <cmd>, then return
quit
format> label
Ready to label disk, continue? y

label error: EFI Labels do not support overlapping partitions
Partition 1 overlaps partition 2.
Partition 6 overlaps partition 2.
no reserved partition found
Warning: error writing EFI.
Label failed.


Any suggestions? I have not tried copying the label from one working
idential disk this suspect one, but that could be done. It just needs my
friend to swap the disks, since I am accessing the box via ssh only.

--
David Kirkby,
G8WRB

Please check out http://www.g8wrb.org/
of if you live in Essex http://www.southminster-branch-line.org.uk/

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David Kirkby <david.kirkby@onetel.net> wrote:

: I've tried:

: 1) dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/rdsk/c2t5d0c2 count=16

: That failed with an I/O error.

Try to add the option bs=512

/dev/zero supplies a unlimited count of zeros, dd don't
know where is the end.

Juergen

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Juergen Schroeder wrote:
> David Kirkby <david.kirkby@onetel.net> wrote:
>
> : I've tried:
>
> : 1) dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/rdsk/c2t5d0c2 count=16
>
> : That failed with an I/O error.
>
> Try to add the option bs=512
>
> /dev/zero supplies a unlimited count of zeros, dd don't
> know where is the end.
>
> Juergen

Thank you,

I had already tried that one, without success.

I later tried formating the disk, which did clear the label. Soon after
that things looked a lot better. I've now put file systems on it and
they are fine.

PS,
when formatting the disk, the format program is very poor at guessing
how long the format will take. It said it would take about 330 minutes,
but once I started running it, then a few percent was done in a minute.
It soon estimated the time to complete was 13 minutes, which is nearly
30x less than its original estimate (before it started formatting).


--
David Kirkby,
G8WRB

Please check out http://www.g8wrb.org/
of if you live in Essex http://www.southminster-branch-line.org.uk/

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

David Kirkby <david.kirkby@onetel.net> wrote:
> 3) Tried to set slice 2 to be 'backup' and start at sector 0, but are
> unable to do that. The smallest sector number I can set the backup slice
> to is 34.

Sounds like you have an EFI label on there instead of a VTOC label.  You
can't overwrite an EFI label simply by writing to block 0.

> label error: EFI Labels do not support overlapping partitions

Yup.

> Any suggestions? I have not tried copying the label from one working
> idential disk this suspect one, but that could be done. It just needs my
> friend to swap the disks, since I am accessing the box via ssh only.

Does it give you the option to write a VTOC label instead?  After that,
the suggestions should work.

--
Darren Dunham                                           ddunham@taos.com
Senior Technical Consultant         TAOS            http://www.taos.com/
Got some Dr Pepper?                           San Francisco, CA bay area
< This line left intentionally blank to confuse you. >

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

> Any suggestions? I have not tried copying the label from one working
> idential disk this suspect one, but that could be done. It just needs my
> friend to swap the disks, since I am accessing the box via ssh only.

What happens if you:

1) Go into format
2) Select the disk
3) Use the 'type' command

It should let you select the correct type of disk. If the identical disk is
in the system it's guaranteed to know the type as one of the options.
Otherwise usually there's an autoconfigure selection to allow the OS to
figure it out for you.

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David Kirkby <david.kirkby@onetel.net> wrote:
> partition> 2
> Part      Tag    Flag     First Sector        Size        Last Sector
>   2     backup    wm                34      33.91GB         71116541

You've got an EFI label on the disk (the "First Sector" and "34" are a
give away).

If you want to replace it with a standard SUN label, then :
"format -e"
Select the type
"type"
"0"
"no" to format.dat
"yes" to SCSI-2
"label"
"0"   to put an SMI label on the disk.

Scott

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

Scott Howard wrote:
> David Kirkby <david.kirkby@onetel.net> wrote:
> 
>
>
> You've got an EFI label on the disk (the "First Sector" and "34" are a
> give away).

Thanks I had never heard of them, but found some info on the Sun site.

> If you want to replace it with a standard SUN label, then :
> "format -e"
> Select the type
> "type"
> "0"
> "no" to format.dat
> "yes" to SCSI-2
> "label"
> "0"   to put an SMI label on the disk.
>
>   Scott

By the time I see your post I had sorted it, although in a different
way. I think the format option in the format program had some options to
overwrite the label. So I started at sector 0, overwriting the label.

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