fdisk(8) [debian man page]
CFDISK(8) GNU fdisk Manual CFDISK(8) NAME
GNU fdisk, lfdisk, gfdisk - manipulate partition tables on a hard drive SYNOPSIS
fdisk [options] [device] DESCRIPTION
fdisk is a disk partition manipulation program, which allows you to create, destroy, resize, move and copy partitions on a hard drive using a menu-driven interface. It is useful for organising the disk space on a new drive, reorganising an old drive, creating space for new oper- ating systems, and copying data to new hard disks. For a list of the supported partition types, see the --list-partition-types option below. It comes in two variants, gfdisk and lfdisk. Lfdisk aims to resemble Linux fdisk 2.12, while gfdisk supports more advanced disk operations, like resizing the filesystem, moving and copying partitions. When starting fdisk, the default is to run gfdisk. OPTIONS
-h, --help displays a help message. -v, --version displays the program's version. -L, --linux-fdisk turns on Linux fdisk compatibility mode. This is the same as running lfdisk. -G, --gnu-fdisk turns off Linux fdisk compatibility mode. -i, --interactive where necessary, prompts for user intervention. -p, --script never prompts for user intervention. -l, --list lists the partition table on the specified device and exits. If there is no device specified, lists the partition tables on all detected devices. -r, --raw-list displays a hex dump of the partition table of the disk, similar to the way Linux fdisk displays the raw data in the partition table. -u, --sector-units use sectors, instead of cylinders for a default unit. -s, --size=DEVICE prints the size of the partition on DEVICE is printed on the standard output. -t, --list-partition-types displays a list of supported partition types and features. The following options are available only to lfdisk. -b, --sector-size=SIZE Specify the sector size of the disk. Valid values are 512, 1024 and 2048. Should be used only on older kernels, which don't guess the correct sector size. -C, --cylinders=CYLINDERS Specify the number of cylinders of the disk. Currently does nothing, it is left for Linux fdisk compatibility. -H, --heads=HEADS Specify the number of heads of the disk. Reasonable values are 255 or 16. -S, --sectors=SECTORS Specify the number of sectors per track. A reasonable value is 63. BUGS
Before editing a BSD disklabel, the partition with the disklabel should already exist on the disk and be detected by the OS. If you have created a BSD-type partition, you need to write the changes to the disk. If fdisk fails to notify the OS about the changes in partition ta- ble, you need to restart your computer. As fdisk tries to guess the device holding the BSD disklabel, it might fail to edit it at all, even if the OS has detected it. In this case you are adviced to simply open the device with fdisk directly. It is possible that it doesn't work on some operating systems. Getting the size of a partition with -s might fail, if fdisk fails to guess the disk device, for the same reasons as with the previous bug. SEE ALSO
mkfs(8), cfdisk(8), parted(8) The fdisk program is fully documented in the info(1) format GNU fdisk User Manual manual. fdisk 18 August, 2006 CFDISK(8)
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fmthard(1M) fmthard(1M) NAME
fmthard - populate label on hard disks SYNOPSIS
SPARC fmthard -d data | -n volume_name | -s datafile [-i] /dev/rdsk/c? [t?] d?s2 fmthard -d data | -n volume_name | -s datafile [-i] /dev/rdsk/c? [t?] d?s2 The fmthard command updates the VTOC (Volume Table of Contents) on hard disks and, on systems, adds boot information to the Solaris fdisk partition. One or more of the options -s datafile, -d data, or -n volume_name must be used to request modifications to the disk label. To print disk label contents, see prtvtoc(1M). The /dev/rdsk/c?[t?]d?s2 file must be the character special file of the device where the new label is to be installed. On systems, fdisk(1M) must be run on the drive before fmthard. If you are using an system, note that the term ``partition'' in this page refers to slices within the fdisk partition on machines. Do not confuse the partitions created by fmthard with the partitions created by fdisk. The following options are supported: -d data The data argument of this option is a string representing the information for a particular partition in the current VTOC. The string must be of the format part:tag:flag:start:size where part is the partition number, tag is the ID TAG of the partition, flag is the set of permission flags, start is the starting sector number of the partition, and size is the number of sectors in the partition. See the description of the datafile below for more information on these fields. -i This option allows the command to create the desired VTOC table, but prints the information to standard output instead of modifying the VTOC on the disk. -n volume_name This option is used to give the disk a volume_name up to 8 characters long. -s datafile This option is used to populate the VTOC according to a datafile created by the user. If the datafile is "-", fmthard reads from standard input. The datafile format is described below. This option causes all of the disk par- tition timestamp fields to be set to zero. Every VTOC generated by fmthard will also have partition 2, by convention, that corresponds to the whole disk. If the input in datafile does not specify an entry for partition 2, a default partition 2 entry will be created auto- matically in VTOC with the tag V_BACKUP and size equal to the full size of the disk. The datafile contains one specification line for each partition, starting with partition 0. Each line is delimited by a new-line character ( ). If the first character of a line is an asterisk (*), the line is treated as a com- ment. Each line is composed of entries that are position-dependent, separated by "white space" and having the fol- lowing format: partition tag flag starting_sector size_in_sectors where the entries have the following values: partition The partition number. Currently, for Solaris SPARC, a disk can have up to 8 partitions, 0-7. Even though the partition field has 4 bits, only 3 bits are currently used. For , all 4 bits are used to allow slices 0-15. Each Solaris fdisk partition can have up to 16 slices. tag The partition tag: a decimal number. The following are reserved codes: 0 (V_UNASSIGNED), 1 (V_BOOT), 2 (V_ROOT), 3 (V_SWAP), 4 (V_USR), 5 (V_BACKUP), 6 (V_STAND), 7 (V_VAR), and 8 (V_HOME). flag The flag allows a partition to be flagged as unmountable or read only, the masks being: V_UNMNT 0x01, and V_RONLY 0x10. For mountable partitions use 0x00. starting_sector The sector number (decimal) on which the partition starts. size_in_sectors The number (decimal) of sectors occupied by the partition. You can save the output of a prtvtoc command to a file, edit the file, and use it as the datafile argument to the -s option. See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes: +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ | ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ |Availability |SUNWcsu | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ uname(1), format(1M), prtvtoc(1M), attributes(5) Only fdisk(1M), installgrub(1M) Special care should be exercised when overwriting an existing VTOC, as incorrect entries could result in current data being inaccessible. As a precaution, save the old VTOC. For disks under one terabyte, fmthard cannot write a VTOC on an unlabeled disk. Use format(1M) for this purpose. 11 Apr 2005 fmthard(1M)