SUMMARY: slice 2 doesn't refer to whole disk

Good morning, and thanks to everyone who responded. We had a situation
where 2 new solaris boxes (2.6 and 2.8) had been built without slice 2
refering to the entire disk. The vast majority of you opined that we
should rebuild. I agree that we should, but we can't bring ourselves to
do so, because the reasoning behind the rebuild has too much to do with
sysadmin philosophy and too little to do with practical dangers.
Instead, we're going to follow the advice of Scott Howard and Johan
Hartzenburg and move the slice. Here's Johan's directions:


First edit your /etc/vfstab to refer to the free slice.
Then use prtvtoc to get a copy of the current partition table.
Edit it so that the cylinders in slice two is reflected by the cylinders
on
another slice.  At the same time make slice 2 go from cylinder 0 to the
last cylinder.
Double-check your cylinder numbers to make sure you did not make any
typos.
Apply this vtoc file using fmthard.  You might need to go into
single-user
mode by booting from a CDROM.  I can not remember whether you can do
fmthard against a disk with root mounted.  Maybe you can.  Either way,
reboot afterward


Thanks again. My original message follows.

Jenn

Hi,

We have a new sysadmin who came from the Linux world and had never built
a Sun. We had him build a 2.6 box and a 2.8 box, and on both of these
builds, he treated slice 2 like a normal slice and partitioned
accordingly. Now there's nothing that references the whole disk. I know
this is bad if you ever want to do anything with the whole raw device,
but how bad is it for the stability of the machine. Should we rebuild?

Thanks,

Jenn
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