NAME¶
scsiformat - low level format an scsi disk device
SYNOPSIS¶
scsiformat [-options...] device
DESCRIPTION¶
Low level formats the SCSI device identified by the scsi disk or generic scsi
device node
device. You must be root to perform this operation.
scsiformat will ask a simple question to get your confirmation and
check if partitions on
device are still mounted. Possible swap spaces
on
device are
swapoff(8)'ed prior to formatting.
During formatting a file like
/tmp/scsiformat.xx:xx:xx:xx:xxxxxxxx is
used to hold some status information.
OPTIONS¶
scsiformat supports the following option switches:
a) Controlling a/synchronous operation¶
- -b n
- block during the format operation. This makes any display
of real progress indicators impossible. However, cheesy SCSI devices will
need it. Scsiformat assumes that the operation will need about n
seconds and provides some progress indication according to that.
-b0 does not print any process indication, just sits and blocks
until formatting completes.
- Read the BUGS section below!
- -T
- just check for a running format command and output
statistics. A file /tmp/scsiformat.* is used to hold the starting
time of the format operation. If formatting completed, this file is
removed by the formatting scsiformat call (which forks of a child
just for this purpose). The exit state of scsiformat is true as
long as the format operation is still in progress. A left over
/tmp/scsiformat.* file will make scsiformat think a program still
runs. It will not accept and remove files older than 48h nevertheless.
- -t n
- check progress every n seconds (default is 5).
-t0 makes scsiformat return without displaying progress.
b) Interleave factor¶
- -i n
- sets the sector interleave factor to be used. Usually you
should stick with the default -i0 which selects a vendor specific
default.
c) Initialisation pattern¶
By default the target will initialise the formatted sectors with a vendor
specific test pattern.
- -I sequence of bytes in hex
- the bytes given in hex characters are repeated and used to
init all blocks on the device.
- -L
- The first four bytes of each logical block are set to the
number of the logical block.
- -P
- The first four bytes of each physical block are set to the
number of logical block, it will occur in.
c) Defect management¶
- -e
- Erase the grown defect list prior to formatting. You can
issue new defects for the grown defect list nevertheless and media
certification may add defects too.
- -p
- Ignore the vendor's primary defect list. This is not
recommended as the vendor probably had a reason to specify these primary
defects.
- -c
- Do not perform a media surface certification. This may
speed up formatting but is also not recommended.
- -s
- Stop when unable to access primary or grown defects due to
some internal error in the target device. When not given, formatting
continues but returns a recovered error upon completion. (Which is
probably not well supported by scsiformat).
- -S
- Erase MODE SELECT settings stored in NVRAM. These are those
you can set with scsiinfo(8) or scsi-config(8).
- -d int, ...
- A comma separated list of logical blocks to mark as defect.
Using this defect format is discouraged as there no clear concept of what
a logical block is here because the format command may move around logical
blocks and change the number of available blocks.
The number can be preceded by 0 or 0x for octal or hexadecimal
notation.
- -D
int:int:int, ...
- A comma separated list of expressions of the form
C:H:S specifying a defect at physical location
Cylinder:Head:Sector. A Sector S of -1 marks the whole track
as bad.
The number can be preceded by 0 or 0x for octal or hexadecimal
notation.
- -B
int:int:int, ...
- A comma separated list of expressions of the from
C:H:B specifying defects at Cylinder:Head:Bytes from Index. Again,
a Bytes from Index value B of -1 marks the whole track as
bad.
The number can be preceded by 0 or 0x for octal or hexadecimal
notation.
You can specify more than one of the
-d,
-D,
-B options but
you must stick to one defect format!
d) Simple partitioning¶
For your convenience,
scsiformat allow to preset the partition table in a
simple way which often suffices for removable medias. This is not intended as
a replacement for
fdisk(8) though.
- -f arg
- perform simple partitioning. -fdos sets up begin and
start of the partition on cylinder boundaries. -ftight does use as
much of the disk as possible (but may confuse OS's other than Linux).
If you do not specify -f at all, scsiformat will not
initialise the partition table. As it has to tell the kernel that the disk
was reformatted and the kernel will try to to read the partition table,
you are like to get some kernel warnings then.
- -G headsxsectors
- set the disk geometry (Heads x Sectors) as DOS will see it
for use in the partition table. If you don't specify it, scsiformat will
ask the kernel what it thinks DOS will get from the adapters BIOS. This
call might fail or return bogus data though. A wrong setting will not
affect linux, but other OS's and esp. DOS and the BIOS (for booting).
- -y type
- set the type for the partition to set. type is a two
digit hex number. See fdisk(8),command t for a list.
Defaults to 83 (Linux native).
- -M size
- Create a primary partition number 1 of maximal size
sizeMB. When size is 0, no partition is created, and
thus the partition table is simply initialised to be valid (but empty). If
the size exceeds the disk capacity, a partition as large as possible is
made. Defaults to 99999.
e) Miscellaneous¶
- -H
- print some command line help to stdout.
- -v
- print version information.
- -F arg
- forced operation, do not ask prior to format. arg
must be
'Ene Mene Meck, und Du bist weg!'
with proper spaces and capitalisation. (this is a German child rhyme
kissing someone goodbye...)
- -V
- print some debugging information.
- -X
- all output is printed in numerics, useful for GUI
interfaces like tk_scsiformat(8). Also makes all operations non
blocking. (By forking of a child process for those scsi operations which
would block).
- -o
- The settings of the flags -c, -p, -s,
-S, -I, -L, -P are obeyed. If you specify one
of these, -o is silently added. Without -o or one of these
flags some factory default is used. Specifying -o explicitly will
allow you to not use any of these options which might not be the default
chosen by the target device otherwise.
RETURN CODES¶
Apart from the codes returned by the
-T flag,
scsiformat will
generally return 1 for system errors, 2 for user errors, and 0 for successful
operation.
BUGS¶
Old status files in
/tmp will confuse the
-T option. However, they
are removed after 48 hours.
I was unable to get hold of a disk supporting querying the progress status (and
which I could stand to lose all data on). Therefore I commented out the
support for this from the source code using a
BLOCKING_ONLY#define. You
are welcome to try and make this work.
Restrictions of the
SCSI_IOCTL_SEND_COMMAND ioctl(2) call for the
sd(4) device make it impossible to issue a
FORMAT_UNIT command
with more than 4096 bytes of arguments. This could be avoided by using the
proper generic scsi device
/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.
FILES¶
/tmp/scsiformat.xx:xx:xx:xx:xxxxxxxx
/dev/sd*
/dev/sg*
SEE ALSO¶
tk_scsiformat(8),
scsiinfo(8),
scsi-config(8),
fdisk(8),
sd(4).
AUTHOR¶
Michael Weller <eowmob@exp-math.uni-essen.de>