> ux-admin, a lot of this is totally new to me but I > will try it since this is the only way to learn.I > really appreciate your time in answering this for me. > Now,there is no option to do format from the > graphical installer so do I need to do this from an > ok prompt?Right now I can only get to an ok prompt > via an init 0 from the OS instead of from a cold boot > since I don't have (yet) a Sun keyboard and it will > be until Monday when I get one...
The ok prompt is the PROM level, which is too low for `format`. `format` is a Solaris-specific command for slicing a disk or disks, meaning, you need to already be running Solaris to be able to execute it. Fortunately, on sparc, disks from Sun already come prelabeled with a VTOC label and the Solaris installer does give you the option to slice up the disk, one or more of them. When you're slicing up the disks in the installer, that's when you are actually doing the equivalent of `format` that you would call from a command line. Long story short, you can slice up the disk(s) the way I described above from the installer's GUI. As an interesting tidbit, Solaris has both `fdisk` and `format`, although they do similar but different things: `fdisk` is used to create/delete/manipulate partitions, and `format` is used to create slices, either inside of these partitions or directly on the disk if one is on sparc. (`fdisk` isn't really used or needed on sparc, but on i86pc.) `newfs` is used to lay out the filesystem(s) on the slices after slicing the disks up. swap slice is not to be `newfs`ed. This message posted from opensolaris.org _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list [email protected]
