Sformat, the first SCSI disk formatting utility for SunOS/Solaris
is now available in the second public release.

Sformat allows formatting/partitioning/analysis/repairing of SCSI
disks, sformat runs with complete functionality on sparc and  mo-
torola systems on SunOS 4.1 and on Solaris 2.3 or later.

This  version  will  compile on Solaris 2.3 or later and on SunOS
4.1,  Linux  and  probably  all  other  operating  systems  where
cdrecord compiles and runs.  Sformat-3.4 compiles and runs on So-
laris/x86  too.   Sformat-3.4  has  its  full  functionality   on
SunOS/Solaris on sparc and Motorola systems, on all other systems
sformat will create Sun disk labels with  wrong  byte-order,  but
formatting/analysys/repair will work.

New features of sformat-3.4 compared to sformat-3.3:

        -       Support  for  new architectures added (HP-UX SGI-
IRIX ...)                  Now compiles on Solaris x86 too.

        -       Allow compiling on Solaris 2.6

        -       Better SCSI error display

        -       Deal with a problem that is caused when the  SCSI
verify                 command returns a wrong error block number
that is smaller                 than the start block number  (in-
finite loop)

        -       Automatic map for disks that have physical geome-
try                 values > 65535 for the Sun disk label

The main advantages to the Sun format utility are:

        -       Working  surface   analyze   that   will   detect
                defective blocks that are going to get bad.

        -       Analyzing    program   that   detects   defective
                bearings in the disk (-randrw).

        -       Will  repair  nearly  any  defective  disk,  that
                has no firmware bug or electric defect.

        -       Allows  to clear the grown defect list if a disk.

        -       Disk geometry and label geometry are separated.

        -       Allows cheating in the  label  geometry  to  deal
                with  the  problems with the limitation to 16 bit
                data types in the Sun disk label.

        -       Partition consistency checker with (ascii) graph-
ical                 display.

        -       Mode   page  interpreter  allows  to  set  easily
                all mode pages you will ever find  in  a  manual,
                sformat needs not to know about them.

I am looking for volunteers to port sformat to new architectures.
First level is to make sformat compile and  send  SCSI  commands,
second level is to add label/partitioning support.

Sformat  should  compile  and run on FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD,
SGI-IRIX and HP-UX if partinioning is not a issue.  For Linux  it
would be nice to have support for Partitions.

If you port sformat to a new architecture (first level), you will
be able to run cdrecord too.

The manual is not yet complete ready. Please mail me  to  correct
my english or if you have difficulties in understanding.

There  is an old german documentation located in doc/sformat/doc,
but the actual troff manual should me more complete this times.

A currently growing nroff/troff document is in sformat/sformat.1

To view the troff document, type:

nroff -man sformat.1 | more -s

The disk database  should  be  located  in  /opt/schily/etc/sfor-
mat.dat

History:

The first version of sformat has been made in 1986.

Sformat  is  the  first  SCSI disk formatting/analyzing/repairing
utility that runs on SunOS/Solaris. The first release of  sformat
has  been  made  for  SunOS  3.0 (two years before Sun introduced
their format utility). Sformat source including 12 years of  com-
petence in SCSI disk handling is now available in source.

You  *need* the SCSI general driver 'scg' in order to run sformat
on SunOS/Solaris

The 'scg' driver is Copyright 1986-1995 Jrg Schilling, it is sup-
plied  binary  in pkgadd(1m) format and is tested on Solaris 2.3,
Solaris 2.4 / 2.5 / 2.6 & 2.7.


To install get:

NOTE:         Be very careful. pkgadd  does  not  check  for  the
right target         architecture. Do not install drivers for in-
tel on sparc         and vice versa. You will get a corrupt  sys-
tem.

        You  need to be root because you need access to /dev/scg?
and to be         able to send some ioctl's to the disk driver.


        Joerg Schilling

        (really Jrg Schilling if you have ISO-8859-1)

If you have questions mail to:

        HOME:                   joerg@schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de
        UNIVERSITY:     js@cs.tu-berlin.de
        WORK:           schilling@fokus.gmd.de