BADSECT(8)						    BSD System Manager's Manual 						BADSECT(8)

NAME

     badsect -- create files to contain bad sectors

SYNOPSIS

     /etc/badsect bbdir sector ...

DESCRIPTION

     Badsect makes a file to contain a bad sector.  Normally, bad sectors are made inaccessible by the standard formatter, which provides a for-
     warding table for bad sectors to the driver; see bad144(8) for details.  If a driver supports the bad blocking standard it is much preferable
     to use that method to isolate bad blocks, since the bad block forwarding makes the pack appear perfect, and such packs can then be copied
     with dd(1).  The technique used by this program is also less general than bad block forwarding, as badsect can't make amends for bad blocks
     in the i-list of file systems or in swap areas.

     On some disks, adding a sector which is suddenly bad to the bad sector table currently requires the running of the standard DEC formatter.
     Thus to deal with a newly bad block or on disks where the drivers do not support the bad-blocking standard badsect may be used to good
     effect.

     Badsect is used on a quiet file system in the following way: First mount the file system, and change to its root directory.  Make a directory
     BAD there.  Run badsect giving as argument the BAD directory followed by all the bad sectors you wish to add.  (The sector numbers must be
     relative to the beginning of the file system, but this is not hard as the system reports relative sector numbers in its console error mes-
     sages.)  Then change back to the root directory, unmount the file system and run fsck(8) on the file system.  The bad sectors should show up
     in two files or in the bad sector files and the free list.  Have fsck remove files containing the offending bad sectors, but do not have it
     remove the BAD/nnnnn files.  This will leave the bad sectors in only the BAD files.

     Badsect works by giving the specified sector numbers in a mknod(2) system call, creating an illegal file whose first block address is the
     block containing bad sector and whose name is the bad sector number.  When it is discovered by fsck it will ask ``HOLD BAD BLOCK ?'' A posi-
     tive response will cause fsck to convert the inode to a regular file containing the bad block.

SEE ALSO

     bad144(8), fsck(8), format(8)

DIAGNOSTICS

     Badsect refuses to attach a block that resides in a critical area or is out of range of the file system.  A warning is issued if the block is
     already in use.

BUGS

     If more than one sector which comprise a file system fragment are bad, you should specify only one of them to badsect, as the blocks in the
     bad sector files actually cover all the sectors in a file system fragment.

HISTORY

     The badsect command appeared in 4.1BSD.

4th Berkeley Distribution					   June 5, 1993 					 4th Berkeley Distribution