SUMMARY (not!): The virtues of scsiping

From: Steve Simmons (scs@lokkur.dexter.mi.us)
Date: Sun Oct 31 1993 - 19:03:32 CST


I would not normally send something directly to Sun-Managers, but this
seemed so useful both for system managers and for reducing the number
of questions on the list I decided to bit the bullet and go ahead. Flame
me if you like. :-) It should go into the faq, but perhaps John has
been excessively modest :-). From the README file:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
SCSIping: use SCSI commands to query a SCSI drive, and suggest two
          format.dat entries to use for the drive. Works on Sun4c/sun4m
          only.

Author: Poul-Henning Kamp (phk@data.fls.dk).

Ported to SunOS 5.x by John DiMarco (jdd@cdf.toronto.edu)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

The only archive site archie turned up for this is oersted.ltf.dth.dk in
/pub/Utilities/scsiping.tar.Z. I've placed at copy at ftp.msen.com in
/pub/vendor/inland-sea/scsiping.tar.gz, with a new Makefile that does an
install with proper permissions. If neither Poul-Henning nor John come
up with a man page, I'll write one.

The `scsiping' utility has the capability of generating a format.dat file
for an arbitrary SCSI disk. It will probe the disk, discover its
capabilities, and spit out a couple of format.dats for you. It does this
while the system is up and running in multi-user mode, and works on both
4.1.3 and solaris 2. Here is a sample of the format.dat generated for
several disks I have:

% scsiping /dev/rsd0a
 . . . much data deleted . . .
    Vendor: 'MAXTOR '
    Product: 'LXT-213S SUN0207'
    Revision: '4.20'
 . . . much data deleted . . .

Suggested format.dat based on default values:

disk_type = "something" \
        : ctlr = SCSI : fmt_time = 4 \
        : rpm = 3600 : bpt = 40000 \
        : nsect = 42 : ncyl = 1412 : pcyl = 1310 : nhead = 7 \
        : acyl = 1 : atrks = 7 : trks_zone = 7 : asect = 1

partition = "something" : disk = "something" : ctlr "SCSI" \
        : c = 0, 415128

Suggested format.dat based on default values:

disk_type = "something" \
        : ctlr = SCSI : fmt_time = 4 \
        : rpm = 3600 : bpt = 40000 \
        : nsect = 41 : ncyl = 1446 : pcyl = 1310 : nhead = 7 \
        : acyl = 1 : atrks = 7 : trks_zone = 7 : asect = 1

partition = "something" : disk = "something" : ctlr "SCSI" \
        : c = 0, 415002

$ scsiping /dev/rsd1a
 . . . much data deleted . . .
    Vendor: 'HP '
    Product: '97548SU '
    Revision: 'B103'
 . . . much data deleted . . .

Suggested format.dat based on default values:

disk_type = "something" \
        : ctlr = SCSI : fmt_time = 4 \
        : rpm = 3600 : bpt = 40000 \
        : nsect = 56 : ncyl = 1439 : pcyl = 1457 : nhead = 16 \
        : acyl = 8 : atrks = 140 : trks_zone = 1 : asect = 1

partition = "something" : disk = "something" : ctlr "SCSI" \
        : c = 0, 1289344

Suggested format.dat based on default values:

disk_type = "something" \
        : ctlr = SCSI : fmt_time = 4 \
        : rpm = 3600 : bpt = 40000 \
        : nsect = 55 : ncyl = 1465 : pcyl = 1457 : nhead = 16 \
        : acyl = 8 : atrks = 140 : trks_zone = 1 : asect = 1

partition = "something" : disk = "something" : ctlr "SCSI" \
        : c = 0, 1289200

$ scsiping /dev/rsd2a
 . . . much data deleted . . .
    Vendor: 'DEC '
    Product: 'DSP3160S '
    Revision: 'T427'
 . . . much data deleted . . .

Suggested format.dat based on default values:

disk_type = "something" \
        : ctlr = SCSI : fmt_time = 4 \
        : rpm = 5400 : bpt = 40000 \
        : nsect = 74 : ncyl = 2639 : pcyl = 2599 : nhead = 16 \
        : acyl = 0 : atrks = 0 : trks_zone = 16 : asect = 16

partition = "something" : disk = "something" : ctlr "SCSI" \
        : c = 0, 3124576

Suggested format.dat based on default values:

disk_type = "something" \
        : ctlr = SCSI : fmt_time = 4 \
        : rpm = 5400 : bpt = 40000 \
        : nsect = 73 : ncyl = 2675 : pcyl = 2599 : nhead = 16 \
        : acyl = 0 : atrks = 0 : trks_zone = 16 : asect = 16

partition = "something" : disk = "something" : ctlr "SCSI" \
        : c = 0, 3124400



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