Procedure to extend the partition table of a Solaris 2.6 hw 5/98 CD-ROM


To generate the CD-R partition table a manual procedure must be followed and a
hard disk that can act as an intermediary for the partition table must be
available. The hard disk is required because a partition table must be generated
via the format tool and this tool only runs on hard disks. Using the hard disk
as an intermediary for the partition table requires a hard disk that can be
unmounted (has no active file systems) and because of the potentially risky
procedure has no critical data stored on it.

WARNING: all the data that are present on the hard disk that is used as an
intermediary are at risk (might be corrupted) if this procedure is followed.
Create a backup first! Note that the partition table (slices) of the hard disk
is changed during the course of this procedure.

Note that this is a one time only procedure and the generated partition table
will be stored in the file block0.cdrom.Solaris_2.6 and will then be used for
each CD-R that is written. The procedure needs only be repeated if a new Solaris
version must be used.

The procedure for an example hard disk c0t1d0:

Save the output of a mount command to a file (to later know where the hard disk
slices are mounted to) as instructed below:
 

mount | grep '\/dev\/dsk\/c0t1d0' > /tmp/current_mount_points.txt


Unmount all mounted slices from the target disk (c0t1d0s0 through c0t1d0s9) by
running umount commands as instructed below:
 

umount /dev/dsk/c0t1d0s0
.
.
.
umount /dev/dsk/c0t1d0s9


Save the hard disk's partition table by running a dd command as instructed
below:
 

dd if=/dev/rdsk/c0t1d0s0 of=/tmp/ptable_backup count=1


Generate the CD-R partition table by running a format command as instructed
below:
 

format -x "format.dat" /dev/rdsk/c0t1d0s0
t
1
p
l
y
q
q


Enter the single character commands listed above when asked by the format
command.

An example of a format.dat file that is used to generate the partition table for
the CD-R:
 

#
## Disk/Partition type for CD-ROM's for Solaris 2.6
#
#disk_type = "CD-ROM Disc extended" \
: ctlr = SCSI : ncyl = 2048 : acyl = 0 : pcyl = 2048 \
: nhead = 1 : nsect = 640 : rpm = 350

partition = "original" \
: disk = "CD-ROM Disc extended" : ctlr = SCSI \
: 0 = usr, rm, 0, 1867c \
: 1 = usr, rm, 1867, 161c \
: 2 = root, rm, 2028, 5c \
: 3 = root, rm, 2033, 5c \
: 4 = root, rm, 2038, 5c \
: 5 = root, rm, 2043, 5c \
: 6 = unassigned, wm, 0, 0 \
: 7 = unassigned, wm, 0, 0


Save the generated CD-R partition table by running a dd command as instructed
below:
 

dd if=/dev/rdsk/c0t1d0s0 of=/tmp/block0.cdrom.Solaris_2.6 count=1


Restore the backed up hard disk partition table by running a dd command as
instructed below:
 

dd if=/tmp/ptable_backup of=/dev/rdsk/c0t1d0s0 count=1 conv=notrunc seek=0


Remount the partitions of the hard disk. You need to look at the
/tmp/current_mount_points.txt file that you created in the first step of this
procedure and then re-mount all the slices that are listed in this file. One
example of a mount command is given below, but you will need to type a similar
command for each of the hard disk slices that you previously unmounted:
 

mount /dev/dsk/c0t1d0s0 /external