I have removed a Sun-supplied 72GB SAS disk (c0t1d0) from our T2000's
zpool, so I can use it as a mirror for the Sun-supplied 72GB system
disk (c0t0d0).

However, somehow the now-spare disk seems to have got an EFI label and
not a VTOC one. This is causing the format program to report the slice
sizes quite differently (cylinders in VTOC, start+end sectors in EFI)
and now even though prtvtoc says the slices I'm trying to mirror are
the same size, metattach fails and metastat says they're different
sizes :-(

It seems like one way to resolve this would be to put a VTOC label on
the disk, but it isn't clear to me how, as I don't know the drive's
geometry or anything.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Cheers,

Chris

On 2008-06-19 18:37:27 +0100, Chris Ridd <chrisridd@mac.com> said:

> I have removed a Sun-supplied 72GB SAS disk (c0t1d0) from our T2000's
> zpool, so I can use it as a mirror for the Sun-supplied 72GB system
> disk (c0t0d0).
>
> However, somehow the now-spare disk seems to have got an EFI label and
> not a VTOC one. This is causing the format program to report the slice
> sizes quite differently (cylinders in VTOC, start+end sectors in EFI)
> and now even though prtvtoc says the slices I'm trying to mirror are
> the same size, metattach fails and metastat says they're different
> sizes :-(
>
> It seems like one way to resolve this would be to put a VTOC label on
> the disk, but it isn't clear to me how, as I don't know the drive's
> geometry or anything.

.... and I just figured it out. Typical! After using metaclear and
metadb -d to make volume manager forget about the drive, I used "format
-e" and then the label command let me choose what kind of label I
wanted.

Sorry for the noise.

Cheers,

Chris

In article <6bvjqnF3ak0bhU1@mid.individual.net>,
Chris Ridd <chrisridd@mac.com> writes:
> I have removed a Sun-supplied 72GB SAS disk (c0t1d0) from our T2000's
> zpool, so I can use it as a mirror for the Sun-supplied 72GB system
> disk (c0t0d0).
>
> However, somehow the now-spare disk seems to have got an EFI label and

If the whole disk was given to ZFS, it will have put an EFI label onto it.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

On 2008-06-20 00:49:35 +0100, andrew@cucumber.demon.co.uk (Andrew
Gabriel) said:

> In article <6bvjqnF3ak0bhU1@mid.individual.net>,
> Chris Ridd <chrisridd@mac.com> writes:
>> I have removed a Sun-supplied 72GB SAS disk (c0t1d0) from our T2000's
>> zpool, so I can use it as a mirror for the Sun-supplied 72GB system
>> disk (c0t0d0).
>>
>> However, somehow the now-spare disk seems to have got an EFI label and
>
> If the whole disk was given to ZFS, it will have put an EFI label onto it.

That is almost certainly how it got there.

Switching the label type really ought to be possible without using
format's -e option. I mean, "Enable SCSI expert menu" (from the
manpage) doesn't really hint at this functionality - and labelling
isn't part of any expert menu.

Still, problem solved...

Cheers,

Chris