SUMMARY: Reformat necessary for Solaris 2.x?

From: Mike van der Velden [243] (mvanderv@glenayre.com)
Date: Fri Dec 17 1993 - 23:34:06 CST


Recently, I asked if disks that hadn't been formatted since 4.1.1 would
need to be reformatted before going to Solaris 2.x, due to changes in
the disk label.

It was pointed out to me that I should have said "repartitioned"
rather than "reformatted".

Thankfully, the answer is no:
   - For disks partitioned under 4.0.x, they can be converted under 4.1.x
     by using fsck -c on the unmounted partition. Only the 4.1.x fsck can
     do this.
   - For disks partitioned under 4.1 and 4.1.1, you just won't be able
     to use the new informational features and commands like prtvtoc,
     fmthard, view flags and tags.

To see which version a disk is, use dumpfs /dev/disk under 4.1.x
If the first line reads:

magic 11954 format dynamic time Wed Dec 1 10:36:31 1993
                        ^^^^^^^
It was newfs'd under 4.1.x. If it says static, it was newfs'ed under an
earlier version of SunOS.

The UNIX filesystem changed between SunOS 4.1.1 and 4.1.2 to include an
additional field which indicated the status of the filesystem. This is
used by quickcheck (now in fsck) to determine whether the filesystem was
stable or clean and therefore not in need of a complete fsck. This is a
Good Thing.

The filesystem is changed in SunOS 5 to include POSIX compliant user/groupids
which are 32 bit rather than 16 bit. The SunOS 4.1.x UNIX filesystem is
backward compatible. No newfs is necessary. As longs as you use userids
less than 64k under SunOS 5 you can move the filesystem back to SunOS 4.1.x.

One other person mentioned that you do need to change your partitions
under 2.x, since you now need a /opt, /proc, etc.

Thanks to the following people for their prompt replies!

Ken Wilcox <wilcox@kpw104.rh.psu.edu>
Casper Dik <casper@fwi.uva.nl>
Rob Lyle <rlyle@nl.oracle.com>
George Ross <gdmr@dcs.ed.ac.uk>
Eric S. Johnson <esj@astro.ufl.edu>
Bill Hunter <bill@Access.COM>
Richard Elling <Richard.Elling@Eng.Auburn.EDU>
Mike Raffety <miker@il.us.swissbank.com>
Ake Hjalmarsson <epkakeh@kaepk2.ericsson.se>
Jerry Symanski <symanski@gold.nosc.mil>

----
Mike van der Velden               email:  mvanderv@glenayre.com
Glenayre Electronics, Ltd.        phone:  604-293-1611, x243
Vancouver, BC.  V5K 5B8           fax:    604-293-4317



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