NAME¶

dasdfmt - formatting of DASD (ECKD) disk drives.

SYNOPSIS¶

dasdfmt [-h] [-t] [-v] [-y] [-p] [-P] [-m step]
[-r cylinder] [-b blksize] [-l volser] [-d layout]
[-L] [-V] [-F] [-k] [-C] [-M mode] device

DESCRIPTION¶

dasdfmt formats a DASD (ECKD) disk drive to prepare it for usage with Linux for S/390. The device is the node of the device (e.g. '/dev/dasda'). Any device node created by udev for kernel 2.6 can be used (e.g. '/dev/dasd/0.0.b100/disc').

WARNING: Careless usage of dasdfmt can result in LOSS OF DATA.

OPTIONS¶

-h or --help

Print usage and exit.

-t or --test

Disables any modification of the disk drive.
dasdfmt just prints out, what it would do.

-v

Increases verbosity.

-y

Start formatting without further user-confirmation.

--norecordzero

Remove permission for subsystem to format write record zero.
This is an expert option: Per default in recent dasd drivers, subsystems are granted the permission to format write record zero. This option is used to remove this permission.

-L or --no_label

Omit the writing of a disk label after formatting.
This makes only sense for the 'ldl' disk layout.
The '-L' option has to be specified after the '-d ldl' option.

e.g. dasdfmt -d ldl -L /dev/...

-V or --version

Print version number and exit.

-F or --force

Formats the device without performing sanity checking.

-C or --check_host_count

Force dasdfmt to check the host access open count to ensure the device is not online on another operating system instance

-d layout or --disk_layout=layout

Formats the device with compatible disk layout or linux disk layout. layout is either cdl for the compatible disk layout (default) or ldl for the linux disk layout.
Compatible disk layout means a special handling of the first two tracks of the volume. This enables other S/390 or zSeries operating systems to access this device (e.g. for backup purposes).

-p or --progressbar

Print a progress bar while formatting. Do not use this option if you are using a 3270 console, running in background or redirecting the output to a file.

-P or --percentage

Print one line for each formatted cylinder showing the number of the cylinder and percentage of formatting process. Intended to be used by higher level interfaces.

-m step or --hashmarks=step

Print a hashmark every step cylinders. The value step has to be within range [1,1000], otherwise it will be set to the default, which is 10.
You can use this option to see the progress of formatting in case you are not able to use the progress bar option -p, e.g. with a 3270 terminal.
The value will be at least as big as the -r or --requestsize value.

-M mode or --mode=mode

Specify the mode to be used to format the device. Valid modes are:

--check

Perform a complete format check on a DASD volume. A blocksize can be specified with -b (--blocksize).

--no-discard

Omit a full space release when formatting a thin-provisioned DASD ESE volume.

-r cylindercount or --requestsize=cylindercount

Number of cylinders to be processed in one formatting step. The value must be an integer in the range 1 - 255.
Use this parameter to exploit any available PAV devices. The number of cylinders optimally matches the number of associated devices, counting the base device and all alias devices.

-b blksize or --blocksize=blksize

Specify blocksize to be used. blksize must be a positive integer and always be a power of two. The recommended blocksize is 4096 bytes.

-l volser or --label=volser

Specify the volume serial number or volume identifier to be written to disk after formatting. If no label is specified, a sensible default is used. volser is interpreted as ASCII string and is automatically converted to uppercase and then to EBCDIC.

e.g. -l LNX001 or --label=DASD01

The volser identifies by serial number the volume. A volume serial number is 1 through 6 alphanumeric or one of the following special characters: $, #, @, %. Enclose a serial number that contains special characters in apostrophes. If the number is shorter than six characters, it is padded with trailing blanks.

Do not code a volume serial number as SCRTCH, PRIVAT, or Lnnnnn (L with five numbers); these are used in OS/390 messages to ask the operator to mount a volume. Do not code a volume serial number as MIGRAT, which is used by the OS/390 Hierarchical Storage Manager DFSMShsm for migrated data sets.

NOTE: Try to avoid using special characters in the volume serial. This may cause problems accessing a disk by volser.
In case you really have to use special characters, make sure you are using quotes. In addition there is a special handling for the '$' sign. Please specify it using '\$' if necessary.

e.g. -l 'a@b\$c#' to get A@B$C#

-k or --keep_volser

Keeps the Volume Serial Number, when writing the Volume Label. This is useful, if the Serial Number has been written with a VM Tool and should not be overwritten.

SEE ALSO¶

fdasd(8)