disklabel(4) Kernel Interfaces Manual disklabel(4)
NAME
disklabel - Disk pack label
SYNOPSIS
#include <sys/disklabel.h>
DESCRIPTION
Each disk or disk pack on a system may contain a disk label which provides detailed information about the geometry of the disk and the par-
titions into which the disk is divided. It should be initialized when the disk is formatted, and may be changed later with the disklabel
program. This information is used by the system disk driver and by the bootstrap program to determine how to program the drive and where
to find the file systems on the disk partitions. Additional information is used by the file system in order to use the disk most effi-
ciently and to locate important file system information. The description of each partition contains an identifier for the partition type
(standard file system, swap area, etc.). The file system updates the in-core copy of the label if it contains incomplete information about
the file system.
The label is located in sector number LABELSECTOR of the drive, usually sector 0 (zero) where it may be found without any information about
the disk geometry. It is at an offset LABELOFFSET from the beginning of the sector, to allow room for the initial bootstrap. The disk
sector containing the label is normally made read-only so that it is not accidentally overwritten by pack-to-pack copies or swap opera-
tions; the DIOCWLABEL ioctl, which is done as needed by the disklabel program, allows modification of the label sector.
A copy of the in-core label for a disk can be obtained with the DIOCGDINFO ioctl; this works with a file descriptor for a block or charac-
ter (raw) device for any partition of the disk. The in-core copy of the label is set by the DIOCSDINFO ioctl. The offset of a partition
cannot generally be changed, nor made smaller while it is open. One exception is that any change is allowed if no label was found on the
disk, and the driver was able to construct only a skeletal label without partition information. Finally, the DIOCWDINFO ioctl operation
sets the in-core label and then updates the on-disk label; there must be an existing label on the disk for this operation to succeed.
Thus, the initial label for a disk or disk pack must be installed by writing to the raw disk. All of these operations are normally done
using the disklabel program.
RELATED INFORMATION
Files: disktab(4)
Commands: disklabel(8) delim off
disklabel(4)