[geeks] Raw disk access under Solaris

Sandwich Maker adh at an.bradford.ma.us
Tue Sep 6 08:43:53 CDT 2016


" From: JP Hindin <jplist2008 at kiwigeek.com>
" 
" Mornin' all, hopefully you (US'ns at least) had relaxing long weekends;
" 
" I have a strong feeling like this is a lot simpler than I'm finding it and 
" my googlefu is completely failing me on finding a reasonable solution 
" here, so I am throwing myself upon the mercy of the wise Sun geeks out 
" there (impress me, Mouse).
" 
" I'm trying to make an image of a non-Sun Differential SCSI disk on an 
" Ultra2 running Solaris 9. The only HVD controllers I own are the fairly 
" standard Sun qLogic controllers, so I'm limited to using this platform 
" with what I have.
" 
" I expected it would be as simple as connecting the drive and doing a dd on 
" slice2, which I was under the impression was the whole disk, but whenever 
" I try I get an 'I/O Error'. What I'm wondering is if the reason it's 
" failing is because it's _not_ a Sun disk and so while Solaris is 
" enumerating the slices/partitions, since there isn't actually a readable 
" partition map for Solaris it's bombing out.
" 
" I've made certain the /dev/dsk/ drive is pointing to the right /devices/ 
" qLogic controller and drive ID, the drive has internal terminators enabled 
" so it's a direct SCSI cable between the controller and the drive. The only 
" other thing I'm doing that might be considered out of the norm is I have 
" the write protect jumper enabled on the drive itself.
" 
" Am I mistaken on my assumption of where this issue is? Is there actually a 
" lower-level access problem with the drive? (It is correctly identified by 
" a probe-scsi-all)

my first thought: as a non-sun disk, it doesn't have a partition map,
thus no slice 2.

the raw disk should still be readable at an even lower level.
________________________________________________________________________
Andrew Hay                                  the genius nature
internet rambler                            is to see what all have seen
adh at an.bradford.ma.us                       and think what none thought


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