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Subject: sformat 3.3 source code released


Sformat 3.3 has been released.

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

Sformat allows formatting/partitioning/analysis/repairing of SCSI disks
Sformat runs on sparc and motorola on SunOS / Solaris 2.x or later.

This version will compile on Solaris 2.x and SunOS 4.x sparc & mototola
and on Linux. If you want to use it on Solaris/x86, you have
to hack the source or use my binary. On Linux, sformat will create
Sun disk labels with wrong byte-order, but formatting/analysys/repair
will work.

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.

	-	Large database of disks including firmware
		specials.

	-	You need no desk calculator to generate
		a partition table.
		Shorthands for:
		-	MBytes
		-	cylinders/head/sectors
		-	size partition to end on end of disk
		-	partition following another partition
		-	partition ending before another partition
		-	shifting partition on the disk
			(allows growing part 0 and shrinking part 1)

	-	Partition consistency checker with (ascii) graphical
		display.

	-	Mode page interpreter allows to set easily
		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.
It should be fairly easy to do this for FreeBSD and NetBSD,
SGI 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 is located in /opt/schily/etc/sformat.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 11 years of competence 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 Jörg Schilling,
it is supplied binary in pkgadd(1m) format and is tested 
on Solaris 2.3, Solaris 2.4 & Solaris 2.5 (sparc).


To install get:

	SCHILYscg.sparc.tar.Z	The scg driver in pkgadd format (sparc).
	sformat-3.3.tar.gz	The sformat source distribution.

NOTE:	These tar archives are 100% ansi compatible. Solaris 2.x tar and GNU
	tar may get some minor trouble.

The files are located on:

ftp://ftp.fokus.gmd.de/pub/unix/sformat/ ...
ftp://ftp.fokus.gmd.de/pub/unix/kernel/scg/ ...

sformat must be installed in /opt/schily/...
		

NOTE:
	Be very careful. pkgadd does not check for the right target 
	architecture. Do not install drivers for intel on sparc
	and vice versa. You will get a corrupt system.

	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 Jörg 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