path: root/sbin/disklabel/disklabel.8

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.\"	@(#)disklabel.8	8.2 (Berkeley) 4/19/94
.\"	$FreeBSD$
.\"
.Dd "April 19, 1994"
.Dt DISKLABEL 8
.Os BSD 4.2
.Sh NAME
.Nm disklabel
.Nd read and write disk pack label
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Nm disklabel
.Op Fl r
.Ar disk
.Nm disklabel
.Fl w
.Op Fl r
.Ar disk Ar disktype
.Oo Ar packid Oc
.Nm disklabel
.Fl e
.Op Fl r
.Ar disk
.Nm disklabel
.Fl R
.Op Fl r
.Ar disk Ar protofile
.Nm disklabel
.Op Fl NW
.Ar disk
.sp
.Nm disklabel
.Fl B
.Oo
.Fl b Ar boot1
.Op Fl s Ar boot2
.Oc
.Ar disk
.Oo Ar disktype Oc
.Nm disklabel
.Fl w
.Fl B
.Oo
.Fl b Ar boot1
.Op Fl s Ar boot2
.Oc
.Ar disk Ar disktype
.Oo Ar packid Oc
.Nm disklabel
.Fl R
.Fl B
.Oo
.Fl b Ar boot1
.Op Fl s Ar boot2
.Oc
.Ar disk Ar protofile
.Oo Ar disktype Oc
.Sh DESCRIPTION
.Nm Disklabel
can be used to install, examine or modify the label on a disk drive or pack.
When writing the label, it can be used
to change the drive identification,
the disk partitions on the drive,
or to replace a damaged label.
On some systems,
.Nm disklabel
can be used to install bootstrap code as well.
There are several forms of the command that read (display), install or edit
the label on a disk.
Each form has an additional option,
.Fl r ,
which causes the label to be read from or written to the disk directly,
rather than going through the system's in-core copy of the label.
This option may allow a label to be installed on a disk
without kernel support for a label, such as when labels are first installed
on a system; it must be used when first installing a label on a disk.
The specific effect of
.Fl r
is described under each command.
The read and install forms also support the
.Fl B
option to install bootstrap code.
These variants are described later.
.Pp
The first form of the command (read) is used to examine the label on the named
disk drive (e.g. sd0 or /dev/rsd0c).
It will display all of the parameters associated with the drive
and its partition layout.
Unless the
.Fl r
flag is given,
the kernel's in-core copy of the label is displayed;
if the disk has no label, or the partition types on the disk are incorrect,
the kernel may have constructed or modified the label.
If the
.Fl r
flag is given, the label from the raw disk will be displayed rather
than the in-core label.
.Pp
The second form of the command, with the
.Fl w
flag, is used to write a standard label on the designated drive.
The required arguments to
.Nm disklabel
are the drive to be labelled (e.g. sd0), and
the drive type as described in the
.Xr disktab 5
file.
The drive parameters and partitions are taken from that file.
If different disks of the same physical type are to have different
partitions, it will be necessary to have separate disktab entries
describing each, or to edit the label after installation as described below.
The optional argument is a pack identification string,
up to 16 characters long.
The pack id must be quoted if it contains blanks.
If the
.Fl r
flag is given, the disk sectors containing the label and bootstrap
will be written directly.
A side-effect of this is that any existing bootstrap code will be overwritten
and the disk rendered unbootable.
If
.Fl r
is not specified,
the existing label will be updated via the in-core copy and any bootstrap
code will be unaffected.
If the disk does not already have a label, the
.Fl r
flag must be used.
In either case, the kernel's in-core label is replaced.
.Pp
For a virgin disk that is not known to
.Xr disktab 5 ,
.Ar disktype
can be specified as
.Dq auto .
In this case, the driver is requested to produce a virgin label for the
disk.  This might or might not be successful, depending on whether the
driver for the disk is able to get the required data without reading
anything from the disk at all.  It will likely succeed for all SCSI
disks, most IDE disks, and vnode devices.  Writing a label to the
disk is the only supported operation, and the
.Ar disk
itself must be provided as the canonical name, i.e. not as a full
path name.
.Pp
An existing disk label may be edited by using the
.Fl e
flag.
The label is read from the in-core kernel copy,
or directly from the disk if the
.Fl r
flag is also given.
The label is formatted and then supplied to an editor for changes.
If no editor is specified in an
.Ev EDITOR
environment variable,
.Xr vi 1
is used.
When the editor terminates, the formatted label is reread
and used to rewrite the disk label.
Existing bootstrap code is unchanged regardless of whether
.Fl r
was specified.
.Pp
With the
.Fl R
flag,
.Nm disklabel
is capable of restoring a disk label that was formatted
in a prior operation and saved in an ascii file.
The prototype file used to create the label should be in the same format
as that produced when reading or editing a label.
Comments are delimited by
.Ar \&#
and newline.
As with
.Fl w ,
any existing bootstrap code will be clobbered if
.Fl r
is specified and will be unaffected otherwise.
.Pp
The
.Fl NW
flags for
.Nm disklabel
explicitly disallow and
allow, respectively, writing of the pack label area on the selected disk.
.Pp
The final three forms of
.Nm disklabel
are used to install boostrap code on machines where the bootstrap is part
of the label.
The bootstrap code is comprised of one or two boot programs depending on
the machine.
The
.Fl B
option is used to denote that bootstrap code is to be installed.
The
.Fl r
flag is implied by
.Fl B
and never needs to be specified.
The name of the boot program(s) to be installed can be selected in a
variety of ways.
First, the names can be specified explicitly via the
.Fl b
and
.Fl s
flags.
On machines with only a single level of boot program,
.Fl b
is the name of that program.
For machines with a two-level bootstrap,
.Fl b
indicates the primary boot program and
.Fl s
the secondary boot program.
If the names are not explicitly given, standard boot programs will be used.
The boot programs are located in
.Pa /usr/mdec .
The names of the programs are taken from the ``b0'' and ``b1'' parameters
of the
.Xr disktab 5
entry for the disk if
.Ar disktype
was given and its disktab entry exists and includes those parameters.
Otherwise, boot program names are derived from the name of the disk.
These names are of the form
.Pa basename Ns boot
for the primary (or only) bootstrap, and
.Pf boot Pa basename
for the secondary bootstrap;
for example,
.Pa /usr/mdec/sdboot
and
.Pa /usr/mdec/bootsd
if the disk device is
.Em sd0 .
.Pp
The first of the three boot-installation forms is used to install
bootstrap code without changing the existing label.
It is essentially a read command with respect to the disk label
itself and all options are related to the specification of the boot
program as described previously.
The final two forms are analogous to the basic write and restore versions
except that they will install bootstrap code in addition to a new label.
.Sh FILES
.Bl -tag -width Pa -compact
.It Pa /etc/disktab
.It Pa /usr/mdec/ Ns Em xx Ns boot
.It Pa /usr/mdec/boot Ns Em xx
.El
.Sh EXAMPLES
.Dl disklabel sd0
.Pp
Display the in-core label for sd0 as obtained via
.Pa /dev/rsd0c .
.Pp
.Dl disklabel -w -r /dev/rsd0c sd2212 foo
.Pp
Create a label for sd0 based on information for ``sd2212'' found in
.Pa /etc/disktab .
Any existing bootstrap code will be clobbered.
.Pp
.Dl disklabel -e -r sd0
.Pp
Read the on-disk label for sd0, edit it and reinstall in-core as well
as on-disk.
Existing bootstrap code is unaffected.
.Pp
.Dl disklabel -r -w sd0 auto
.Pp
Try to auto-detect the required information from sd0, and write a new
label to the disk.  Use another disklabel -e command to edit the
partitioning and file system information.
.Pp
.Dl disklabel -R sd0 mylabel
.Pp
Restore the on-disk and in-core label for sd0 from information in
.Pa mylabel .
Existing bootstrap code is unaffected.
.Pp
.Dl disklabel -B sd0
.Pp
Install a new bootstrap on sd0.
The boot code comes from
.Pa /usr/mdec/sdboot
and possibly
.Pa /usr/mdec/bootsd .
On-disk and in-core labels are unchanged.
.Pp
.Dl disklabel -w -B /dev/rsd0c -b newboot sd2212
.Pp
Install a new label and bootstrap.
The label is derived from disktab information for ``sd2212'' and
installed both in-core and on-disk.
The bootstrap code comes from the file
.Pa /usr/mdec/newboot .
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr disklabel 5 ,
.Xr disktab 5
.Sh DIAGNOSTICS
The kernel device drivers will not allow the size of a disk partition
to be decreased or the offset of a partition to be changed while it is open.
Some device drivers create a label containing only a single large partition
if a disk is unlabeled; thus, the label must be written to the ``a''
partition of the disk while it is open.
This sometimes requires the desired label to be set in two steps,
the first one creating at least one other partition,
and the second setting the label on the new partition
while shrinking the ``a'' partition.
.Pp
On some machines the bootstrap code may not fit entirely in the area
allocated for it by some filesystems.
As a result, it may not be possible to have filesystems on some partitions
of a ``bootable'' disk.
When installing bootstrap code,
.Nm disklabel
checks for these cases.
If the installed boot code would overlap a partition of type FS_UNUSED
it is marked as type FS_BOOT.
The
.Xr newfs 8
utility will disallow creation of filesystems on FS_BOOT partitions.
Conversely, if a partition has a type other than FS_UNUSED or FS_BOOT,
.Nm disklabel
will not install bootstrap code that overlaps it.
.Sh BUGS
When a disk name is given without a full pathname,
the constructed device name uses the ``a'' partition on the tahoe,
the ``c'' partition on all others.
.Pp
For the i386 architecture, the primary bootstrap sector contains
an embedded
.Em fdisk
table.
.Nm Disklabel
takes care to not clobber it when installing a bootstrap only
.Pq Fl B ,
or when editing an existing label
.Pq Fl e ,
but it unconditionally writes the primary bootstrap program onto
the disk for
.Fl w
or
.Fl R ,
thus replacing the
.Em fdisk
table by the dummy one in the bootstrap program.  This is only of
concern if the disk is fully dedicated, so that the BSD disklabel
starts at absolute block 0 on the disk.