Sformat, the first SCSI disk formatting utility for SunOS/Solaris
is now available in the second public release.

Sformat allows formatting/partitioning/analysis/repairing of SCSI
disks, sformat runs with complete functionality on sparc and  mo-
torola systems on SunOS 4.1 and on Solaris 2.3 or later.

This  version  will  compile on Solaris 2.3 or later and on SunOS
4.1,  Linux  and  probably  all  other  operating  systems  where
cdrecord compiles and runs.

Sformat-3.5  has its full functionality on SunOS/Solaris on sparc
and Motorola systems, on all other systems  sformat  will  create
Sun    disk   labels   with   wrong   byte-order,   but   format-
ting/analysys/repair will work.

New features of sformat-3.5 compared to sformat-3.4:

-       Now using libscg. The code  originally  was  an  integral
part          of  sformat  (since 1986). It is now a separate li-
brary.

-       Unified options with cdrecord.

-       print disk names on scanbus. Unified scanbus output.



The main advantages to the Sun format utility are:

        -       Working  surface   analyze   that   will   detect
                defective blocks that are going to get bad.

        -       Analyzing    program   that   detects   defective
                bearings in the disk (-randrw).

        -       Will  repair  nearly  any  defective  disk,  that
                has no firmware bug or electric defect.

        -       Allows  to clear the grown defect list if a disk.

        -       Disk geometry and label geometry are separated.

        -       Allows cheating in the  label  geometry  to  deal
                with  the  problems with the limitation to 16 bit
                data types in the Sun disk label.

        -       Large  database  of  disks   including   firmware
                specials.

        -       You   need   no   desk   calculator  to  generate
                all mode pages you will ever find  in  a  manual,
                sformat needs not to know about them.

I am looking for volunteers to port sformat to new architectures.
First level is to make sformat compile and  send  SCSI  commands,
second level is to add label/partitioning support.

Sformat  should  compile  and run on FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD,
SGI-IRIX and HP-UX if partinioning is not a issue.  For Linux  it
would be nice to have support for Partitions.

If you port sformat to a new architecture (first level), you will
be able to run cdrecord too.

The manual is not yet complete ready. Please mail me  to  correct
my english or if you have difficulties in understanding.

There  is an old german documentation located in doc/sformat/doc,
but the actual troff manual should me more complete this times.

A currently growing nroff/troff document is in sformat/sformat.1

To view the troff document, type:

nroff -man sformat.1 | more -s

The disk database  should  be  located  in  /opt/schily/etc/sfor-
mat.dat

History:

The first version of sformat has been made in 1986.

Sformat  is  the  first  SCSI disk formatting/analyzing/repairing
utility that runs on SunOS/Solaris. The first release of  sformat
has  been  made  for  SunOS  3.0 (two years before Sun introduced
their format utility). Sformat source including 12 years of  com-
petence in SCSI disk handling is now available in source.

You  *need* the SCSI general driver 'scg' in order to run sformat
on SunOS/Solaris

The 'scg' driver is Copyright 1986-1995 Jrg Schilling, it is sup-
plied  binary  in pkgadd(1m) format and is tested on Solaris 2.3,
Solaris 2.4 / 2.5 / 2.6 & Solaris 7 & Solaris 8.


To install get:

        SCHILYscg.sparc.tar.Z   The scg driver in  pkgadd  format
(sparc).          sformat-3.5.tar.gz      The sformat source dis-
tribution.
tem.

        You  need to be root because you need access to /dev/scg?
and to be         able to send some ioctl's to the disk driver.


        Joerg Schilling

        (really Jrg Schilling if you have ISO-8859-1)

If you have questions mail to:

        HOME:                   joerg@schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de
        UNIVERSITY:     js@cs.tu-berlin.de
        WORK:           schilling@fokus.gmd.de