SUMMARY: Disklabel, Iomega Jaz drives and DU 4.0

From: Adrian Burd <adrian_at_calanus.tamu.edu>
Date: Tue, 9 Sep 1997 13:06:40 -0500

Many thanks to all who replied to this query and apologies for the
delay in posting the summary (research got in the way of having fun
with the computers). Thanks to Alan Rollow, Tom Blinn and Tom Webster.

My original query:

 DU4.0 did not allow me to use the disklabels for the Iomega Jaz drive
that I used to use under OSF1/3.2. I could read the old disks, but not
set up any new ones.

The solution(s):

The general consensus of opinion is that this is a bug in the
disklabel for DU4.0 - though apparently Digital think of it as a
feature.

Alan Rollow said:
  This is a bug on the V4.0 version of disklabel. Disklabel has
  always had the feature of being able to get the geometry from
  a well behaved SCSI device, if a disktab entry didn't exist
  for it. The Jazz (one z or two?) drives aren't that well behaved
  and don't put geometry information in the expected place. In
  V4.0 the logic was apparently changed to only used geometry
  information provided by the disk. I think the intent was to
  use the disk's version first and fall back on disktab if there
  was one.

Tom suggested three solutions:

1. Copy a disklabel from a similar drive, like an rz26f, to a text file using
   'disklabel -r'. Modify the disklabel as desired and write it to your new
   disk using "disklabel -R -r rzN /tmp/jaz.disklabel rzboot bootrz". This
   should work if you want to copy your disklabels fron the working Jaz drives
   you labeled under 3.2.
   
1.a. If for some reason disklabel is being non-cooperative, a dd of the first
   couple of kb off the old Jaz drive, dd'ed back to the new drive should also
   transfer the label.

2. Andy Sheaff (sheaff_at_eece.maine.edu) has a utility which enables the labelling
   of a ZIP 100 disk. If I recall you can replace the disklabel file he uses with
   an existing binary disklabel from a working Jaz drive.
   
   You used to be able to find the utility at:
  
   ftp://ftp.eece.maine.edu/pub/src/alpha/util/ZIP_disklabel_1.0.tar.gz
   
   (I haven't checked for a long while....)
   
3. Go to the backups of your system while it was running 3.2x and restore
   disklabel and newfs from the old system into a working directory on the new
   system. Then you should be able to add a disklabel for Jaz drives to your
   /etc/disktab like:

   ----- snip ----- snip ----- snip ----- snip ----- snip -----
   jaz|iomega jaz:\
           :ty=winchester:dt=SCSI:ns#32:nt#64:nc#1018:\
           :oc#0:pc#2084864:bc#8192:fc#1024:
   ----- snip ----- snip ----- snip ----- snip ----- snip -----

   This should let you label to your hart's content, as long as you remember
   to specify the DU 3.2 disklabel program.
   
   The old newfs is a bit of paranoia, I once had the 4.0 version complain
   with a hand built disklabel.
   

The first solution worked fine, though I did modify the ascii
disklabel that was read from the old disks to make better use of the
disk space.

Everything now works fine! Once again, many thanks.
Received on Tue Sep 09 1997 - 20:28:24 NZST

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