Formatting Drives (Clearing Tru64)

[Michael Schulte zur Sur]

Hi Stephen,

that's strange but you can recreate it with
cd /dev
./MAKEDEV zero

greetings,

Michael

[Stephen A. Landers]

/dev/zero(zero special file), which is known as source of zeros,
is available from HP-UX 10.30 and later. This functionality was
added to mm driver with major number 3 and minor number 4.

Note, on 10.30 and 11.00, /dev/zero is not created by insf(1m),
thus, system administrators need to create it with mknod command.
On 11.11 or later, insf creates /dev/zero automatically.

# mknod /dev/zero c 3 4 /dev/zero
# ls -l /dev/zero
crw-rw-rw- 1 bin sys 3 0x000004 May 2 2001 /dev/zero

This procedure helped a lot. The correction I would point out would be to omit the last /dev/zero in the mknod command.

I found that the procedure was successful with this implementation as shown below:

[sdat2c01][/] #date;od -c /dev/dsk/c4t3d0 | head -22
Thu Nov 11 13:17:49 EST 2004
0000000 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0
*
0020000 L V M R E C 0 1 C h 245 3 @ m 017 271
0020020 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 214 237 \0 \0 \0 \0
0020040 \0 \0 \0 260 \0 \0 \0 200 \0 \0 \0 F \0 \0 \0 \n
0020060 \0 \0 \0 200 \0 \0 \0 330 \0 \0 \0 \b \0 \0 \0 320
0020100 \0 \0 001 ( \0 \0 200 \0 \0 \0 004 \0 \0 \0 \0 026
0020120 \0 \0 020 \0 \0 \0 \b 237 \0 \0 204 \0 \0 \0 \0 004
0020140 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0
*
0022000 D E F E C T 0 1 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0
0022020 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0
*
0220000 L V M R E C 0 1 C h 245 3 @ m 017 271
0220020 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 214 237 \0 \0 \0 \0
0220040 \0 \0 \0 260 \0 \0 \0 200 \0 \0 \0 F \0 \0 \0 \n
0220060 \0 \0 \0 200 \0 \0 \0 330 \0 \0 \0 \b \0 \0 \0 320
0220100 \0 \0 001 ( \0 \0 200 \0 \0 \0 004 \0 \0 \0 \0 026
0220120 \0 \0 020 \0 \0 \0 \b 237 \0 \0 204 \0 \0 \0 \0 004
0220140 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0
*
0222000 D E F E C T 0 1 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0
[sdat2c01][/] #date;dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/rdsk/c4t3d0;date
Thu Nov 11 13:18:42 EST 2004
I/O error
216001+0 records in
216000+1 records out
Thu Nov 11 13:22:50 EST 2004
[sdat2c01][/] #date;od -c /dev/dsk/c4t3d0 | head -22
Thu Nov 11 13:37:06 EST 2004
0000000 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0
*
645700000
[sdat2c01][/] #

With /dev/null and other input files I tried to substitute, I experienced either a command lockup or 0 records in and 0 records out. I'm happy with the results. Thanks!