Using a 160GB Disk with Solaris 8

Question

Hello all:
I am using an Ultra5 system with OBP 3.25.3, Solaris 8 [10/01]. I have a 160GB Seagate ST3160812A disk drive that I am trying to use as a second drive (primary slave).
I have installed the drive on the primary channel as a slave and performed boot -r. The /dev and /devices directories correctly setup device links (c0t1d0) for the drive.
Assuming all was good I tried to create a new file system on slice 0 with "newfs /dev/rdsk/c0t1d0s0". This responded with
/dev/rdsk/c0t1d0s0: I/O error
I then used the "format" command to see what was going on. I can see the drive in the 'format' command:
#format
AVAILABLE DISK SELECTIONS
0. c0t0d0 <ST320420A cyl 39533 alt 2 hd 16 sec 63>...
1. c0t1d0 <ST3160812A cyl 255 alt 2 hd 16 sec 255>...
Specify disk (enter...) : 1
selecting c0t1d0
(disk formatted, no defect list found)
format> quit
As can be seen the 160GB drive has parameters that are all wrong for this size disk. The #format->verify command output for slice 2 (backup) shows the following:
ascii name = <ST3160812A cyl 255 alt 2 hd 16 sec 255>
pcyl = 257
ncyl = 255
acyl = 2
nhead = 16
nsect = 255
Part Tag Flag Cylinders Size Blocks
0 unassigned wm 0 0 (0/0/0) 0
1 :: :: ::
2 backup wu 0 - 254 508.01MB (255/0/0) 1040400
3 unassigned wm 0 0 (0/0/0) 0
7 unassigned wm 0 0 (0/0/0) 0
I recalled that at boot-up the system showed a 'wrong magic number' message on the new drive. I tried to re-label the drive (format->label). The 'magic number' message went away on the next reboot but the 'format->verify' still showed the same thing.
I have tried several approaches to fix this:
1. I have read several posts and on-line texts that indicate the 137GB limit associated with LBA addressing for the Ultra5 IDE controllers. I have also read the post "How can I use my 160G Disk?"
(http://forum.java.sun.com/thread.jspa?forumID=829&threadID=5065871)
which provided great information and described using the "format" command to configure the disk with 65535 cylinders.
When I use the "format->type" command I get the following:
#format
format> type
AVAILABLE DRIVE TYPES:
0. ST320420A
1. ST3160812A
2. other
According to the "How can I use..." post, I select [2] other and set parameters. When I get to the first parameter to set the cylinders to 65535 I get the following:
Enter number of data cylinders: 65535
'65535' is out of range
a. Using the #format->type {other} function to change the # of cylinders is not accepted by the OS. In fact any value over 32000 cylinders is rejected by the command.
b. Just in case I also tried using the [1] disk type. I get the message:
"disk formatted, no defect list found"
So the suggestion in this post did not work in my case.
2. Next I tried referring to the post "Sun Ultra 5 Hard Drive"
(http://forum.java.sun.com/thread.jspa?forumID=860&threadID=5068466)
which suggested using the dd command to 'nuke' the disk label and re-label with format. So using the command:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/rdsk/c0t1d0s2 bs1b count =16
the command is processed properly but when I perform "format->verify"
the label is unchanged even after I re-execute the "format->label" command. Rebooting the system did not change it either.
3. I also attempted to use the 'format->part->modify' command to change the partition. When the command gets to the 'Free Hog Partition[6]" prompt I get a 'warning: no space available from Free Hog partition" message.
4. I also tried using the 'format->part' command to directly modify the specific '2' partition from the partition menu.
format>part
partition> 2
Part Tag Flag Cylinders Size Blocks
2 backup wu 0 - 254 508.01MB (255/0/0) 1040400
Enter partition id tag[backup]; <return>
Enter partition permission flags [wu]: <return>
Enter new starting cylinder cyl[0]: <return>
Enter partition size [1040400b, 255c, 508.01mb, 0.50gb]: 100g
'100.00gb is out of range'
^D
For some reason even this command limits the partition size.
5. My last ditch attempt was to use fdisk -S <geom_file> to set the label geometry with the following parameters in the file:
pcyl: 65535
ncyl: 65535
acyl: 2
bcyl: 0
nheads: 16
nsectors: 255
secsize: 512
When I run this command the command core dumps.
I'm somewhat lost as to what is preventing me from even using the suggestions others have found useful.
Has anyone successfully used a 160GB Seagate (ST3160812A or other 160GB model) drive with the following?
(as defined by #showrev and #prtconf)
system: Ultra5
OS: Solaris 8 [10.01 assumed based on kernel date]
Kernel: SunOS 5.8 Generic 108528-13 December 2001
OBP 3.25.3 2000/06/29 14:12
kernel architecture: sun4u
My hardware guy has tried numerous times to get a 120GB drive (which some posts indicated should work without any problems) but they are very hard to find. If I can get the 160GB drive to work (even with 137GB) I'll be happy.
Thanks for any information.
elbowz

Answer 1

Your version of the OBP as well as the Solaris kernel are not the most up-to-date. If the system is stable without the new disk I would upgrade the OBP to the last version (3.31). It may also be worthwhile to patch the kernel with the recommended cluster patches (if you have enough disk space).