How to add a new partition to Solaris 8 (Intel) file system? 1

[jerryshao]

Hi,

I have a 20G hard disk. When I installed the Solaris 8 (Intel version), I formatted only 8G. The other 16G was in a free partition.

I've tried the "format" command. The "fdisk" works, but I can't find the new partition from the "partition" submenu.

Is there any way I can add the rest 16G to my current Solaris 8 file system?

Thanks in advance.

Jerry.

 

[vguneta]

Dear
U will need to use the format command of the Solaris to add new partitions under Solaris.
Best Regards,
- Vijay Guneta

 

[jerryshao]

Hi Vijay,

Thanks for your response.
I did try the format. My disk has 39713 cylinders. But if I run "format" then "partition", I can only see 15861 cylinders.

Best regards,

Jerry.

 

[jad]

from what i can gather, their can only be one solaris partition on a hard disk.

this partition is then broken up in solaris into 8 slices ...

the 'partition's visible in 'format' you are looking at are effectively virtual partitions controlled by solaris.

to make your available space bigger you will have to refomat the whole disk ...

Jon.

If i'm wrong i'd love to know better.

 

[mridul]

First use the format command to make a new partition by specifying the size., label it , name it & save it :/format.dat before exiting. Then use the newfs command to format this partition like this
newfs /dev/rdsk/c0t1d0s1. It will confirm the size & then ll show all the blocks formatted. then mount the partition if not mounted.
cheers

 

[jad]

that only creates 'partitions' within the solaris partition ...
it doesn't increase the size of the solaris partition to be the whole disk ...
so if you created a partition for solaris of 8Gb, and then put in 8 slices of 1Gb each, no matter how hard you tried you would not be able to increase any of those slices to a sum of greater than the original 8Gb.

the 'partition' in the format command is really dealing with slices ... these are segments of the original Solaris partition.

if you 'format' then 'fdisk' then you'll be able to add more real partitions, but i'm not sure if it is possible to run with these other partitions at the same time ... one disk, one partition is how it seems to be for me ...

jon

 

[jerryshao]

The 'format' couldn't help me.
'format' and 'fidsk' could work as I said in my first post. I did see a new partition in the fdisk table. But there is no way I can persaude 'format' to recognize it.

Jad is correct. I had to reformat the whole disk.

Have you noticed there is no 'fdisk' in Sparc version 'format'.
Maybe this is a bug for Intel Solaris. Or Sun is not good at PC fdisk as Linux does.

Thanks guys.

Jerry.

 

[jad]

it just doesn't _do_ partitions in the way that other OS's work ... for sparc it doesn't need them, no partitioning ... no multiboot systems (except on different devices)

the fdisk command is to work with intel booting, multiboot systems and other stuff ...

on intel the system has to have an active partition to boot to for the bios, on a sparc you just have to have the right file on a device and boot to that device ...

basically if you think about solaris as being a port of the Sparc version to PC then only one Solaris partition can exist on any one device.

if any of this makes any sense, i'm glad.

Jon