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

Sformat allows formatting/partitioning/analysis/repairing of SCSI
disks Sformat runs on sparc and motorola on SunOS /  Solaris  2.x
or later.

This  version  will  compile on Solaris 2.x and SunOS 4.x sparc &
mototola and on Linux. If you want to use it on Solaris/x86,  you
have  to hack the source or use my binary. On Linux, sformat will
create  Sun  disk  labels  with  wrong  byte-order,  but  format-
ting/analysys/repair will work.

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.

        -       Large   database   of  disks  including  firmware
                specials.

        -       You  need  no   desk   calculator   to   generate
                a  partition  table.                   Shorthands
for:                                               -       MBytes
                -       cylinders/head/sectors
                -       size partition to  end  on  end  of  disk
                -       partition   following  another  partition
                -       partition ending before another partition
                -       shifting    partition    on    the   disk
                        (allows growing part 0 and shrinking part
1)

        -       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,
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 is located in /opt/schily/etc/sformat.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 11 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 & Solaris 2.5 (sparc).


To install get:

        SCHILYscg.sparc.tar.Z   The  scg  driver in pkgadd format
(sparc).          sformat-3.3.tar.gz      The sformat source dis-
tribution.

NOTE:   These  tar archives are 100% ansi compatible. Solaris 2.x
tar and GNU         tar may get some minor trouble.

The files are located on:

ftp://ftp.fokus.gmd.de/pub/unix/sformat/                      ...
ftp://ftp.fokus.gmd.de/pub/unix/kernel/scg/ ...

sformat must be installed in /opt/schily/...

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