.TH tk_scsiformat 8 "23 August 1997" "scsiinfo 1.7" "Scsiinfo User's Guide"
.SH NAME
tk_scsiformat \- low level format an scsi disk device with a nice user interface
.SH SYNOPSIS
.BI "tk_scsiformat [" device ]
.SH DESCRIPTION
Low level formats the SCSI device identified by the scsi disk or generic scsi device node
.IR device .
You must be root to perform this operation. When you do not specify a
.IR device ,
.B tk_scsiformat
gives you a list to select a disk device from.

.B tk_scsiformat
is a Tcl/Tk user interface to
.BR scsiformat (8). 

You should read that manual page for the general operation of
.BR scsiformat .
All common X11 and Tcl/Tk options apply.

By the nature of graphical user interfaces, there should not be much to explain here. All
entry fields refer directly to
.BR scsiformat (8)
options.

In addition to those, you are able to save your selections to be used as defaults for this
device next time in a file
.I /usr/lib/scsi/scsiformat.defs.*
by pressing the
.B <Save Defaults>
button. This is intended and very handy for formatting of removable medias. Note, however,
that
.B tk_scsiformat
is not as clever as
.BR scsiformat (8)
(or even tries to be) to find if multiple ways to refer to the same scsi device
(disk device, generic device).

Furthermore, you can select (or enter freely) a command to automatically make a file system on 
the newly formatted disk.

While formatting a nice completion bar is drawn. Alas, I could not really implement querying
progress from a target device yet.

The
.I /usr/lib/scsi/tworands
binary is used to calculate two random integers which is not supported by plain Tcl/Tk.

.SH BUGS
When not specifying a device to format,
.B tk_scsiformat
will prepare a list of disk devices to choose from. Alas, if a blocking
format operation is running on one of them,
.B tk_scsiformat
will block in a non interruptible disk wait sleep.

Old status files in 
.I /tmp
will confuse
.B tk_scsiformat.
However, they are removed after 48 hours.

Restrictions of the
.B SCSI_IOCTL_SEND_COMMAND
.BR ioctl (2)
call for the
.BR sd (4)
device make it impossible to issue a
.B FORMAT_UNIT
command with more than 4096 bytes of arguments. This could be avoided by using the proper
generic scsi device
.I /dev/sg*
instead, at least where the kernel is compiled to support it. Most of the time this is not needed
though and thus I'm myself to lazy to do it.
.SH FILES
.I /usr/lib/scsi/tworands
.br
.I /usr/lib/scsi/scsiformat.defs.*
.br
.I /tmp/scsiformat.xx:xx:xx:xx:xxxxxxxx
.br
.I /dev/sd*
.br
.I /dev/sg*

.SH SEE ALSO
.BR scsiformat (8),
.BR scsiinfo (8),
.BR scsi-config (8),
.BR fdisk (8),
.BR sd (4).

.SH AUTHOR
Michael Weller <eowmob@exp-math.uni-essen.de>