*BSD News Article 82246


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Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
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From: nsayer@quack.kfu.com (Nick Sayer)
Subject: Re: Iomega JAZ disktab entries anyone???
Message-ID: <nDRYtnm@quack.kfu.com>
Sender: news@quack.kfu.com (0000-News(0000))
Organization: The Duck Pond public unix, +1 408 249 9630, log in as guest.
References: <55gv8j$cho@baygull.rtd.com>
Date: Mon, 4 Nov 1996 01:13:48 UTC
Lines: 33

John L. Sackett III <root@jsackett.slip.rtd.com> writes:

>Just bought one, and want to use it for FreeBSD.  I have a PCI NCR -825 SCSI
>controller card.  It recognizes the JAZ drive no problem, but the sysinstall
>utility will not write the boot block. Has anyone else tried this?  I sure could use a working disktab entry.    

In general, a disktab entry for a SCSI device can be made up from
wholecloth.

1. Use dmesg to find out how many blocks the device has. Look at the
'sd[0-n]' lines.

2. Divide that number by two small numbers. These two numbers will be
used as the number of heads (or tracks per cylindar, if you prefer),
the second as the number of sectors. It is somewhat preferable that
the number of blocks be evenly divisible by the product of these two
numbers. The quotient after the division is the number of cylindars.
Using 64 and 32 as the numbers is rather nice since that way a cylindar
is exactly 1 MB.

3. At this point, we can come up with this as a minimalist disktab
(the remaining fields have reasonable defaults):

:ty=SCSI:nc#cyl:nt#heads:ns#sectors:se#512:

All that's left is to add a partition table. The only thing that has to
be fixed there is that partition c should occupy the entire disk.

-- 
Nick Sayer <nsayer@quack.kfu.com>  | Just think of me as a recombinant Simp-
N6QQQ @ N0ARY.#NORCAL.CA.USA.NOAM  | son. Homer's looks, Lisa's brains, Bart's
+1 408 249 9630, log in as 'guest' | manners, and Maggie's appetite for TV.
URL: http://www.kfu.com/~nsayer/   | 		       -- Me