Changing b/s via camcontrol (was invalid sector size 520)

[Thomas Stromberg]

> If you read the manpage for "camcontrol", the section on the format
> option specifically mentions changing the sector size. If looks like
> you
> should change the sector size in the modepage, then issue the format
> command.

Thanks for the heads up on camcontrol. It looks exactly like what I
need. I went through /usr/share/misc/scsi_modes to see what modepage
needs to be edited for bytes/sector. It looked like 0x05 is what I
needed. So, I tried:

# camcontrol modepage da0 -m 5 -e
camcontrol: error sending mode sense command

I then check the list of valid mode pages camcontrol finds:

# camcontrol modepage da0 -l
0x01 Read-Write Error Recovery Page
0x02 Disconnect-Reconnect Page
0x03 Format Device Page
0x04 Rigid Disk Drive Geometry Page
0x07 Verify Error Recovery Page
0x08 Caching Page
0x0a Control Mode Page
0x0c Notch and Partition Page
0x00 Vendor-Specific
0x00 Vendor-Specific

I noticed that codepage 0x03 contains sector/bytes data (and no others):

root@subedei (/home/helix)# camcontrol modepage da0 -m3
Tracks per Zone: 21
Alternate Sectors per Zone: 9
Alternate Tracks per Zone: 0
Alternate Tracks per Logical Unit: 21
Sectors per Track: 106
Data Bytes per Physical Sector: 520
...

So I try to use -e to edit it, but I only see Tracks per Zone, Alternate
Sectors per Zone, and Alternate Tracks per Logical Unit in my editor. I
just tried this with another Seagate drive on a production server of
ours and camcontrol returned "no editable entries". Am I in the right
direction?

Thanks for your help btw. Once this gets settled, I'll be sure to add it
to the bsdwiki for the next person. Unfortunatly, my Sun U10 is
scsi-less. I've got an HP9000 and an Indigo^2 with SCSI, but no OS (two
of these drives, which also have this problem, are so I can get them up
and running again). SGI's fx.ARCS doesn't seem to be too friendly to the
sector size either.

/ Thomas Stromberg

To Unsubscribe: send mail to majo...@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-scsi" in the body of the message

[J Wunsch]

Thomas Stromberg <tho...@stromberg.org> wrote:

> I noticed that codepage 0x03 contains sector/bytes data (and no others):
>
> root@subedei (/home/helix)# camcontrol modepage da0 -m3
> Tracks per Zone: 21
> Alternate Sectors per Zone: 9
> Alternate Tracks per Zone: 0
> Alternate Tracks per Logical Unit: 21
> Sectors per Track: 106
> Data Bytes per Physical Sector: 520
> ...
>
> So I try to use -e to edit it, but I only see Tracks per Zone, Alternate
> Sectors per Zone, and Alternate Tracks per Logical Unit in my editor.

That means you cannot edit that value on this mode page. Use the cook
recipe Greg Lehey posted. Unfortunately, the vendors never agreed
about the procedure to reformat with another sector size (if possible
at all, not all support it). Some use modepage 3, some use the
blocksize value in the modepage header. Your drive is most likely of
this type, and Greg's posting contains the solution.

I'm not sure whether it would be possible to replace the second
camcontrol in Greg's posting by a simple "camcontrol format da0"
instead, or whether camcontrol format does some modepage fiddling of
its own. It's vital for the success that both SCSI commands, the one
setting the blocksize and the FORMAT UNIT command, are issued without
intervening commands.

> Unfortunatly, my Sun U10 is
> scsi-less.

Any 53c875-based card should work in it. I've seen cheap Tekram
DC390<something> controllers work in it. Note that it (IMHO) doesn't
work with any other Symbios Logic chip, only the '875.

--
cheers, J"org .-.-. --... ...-- -.. . DL8DTL

http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ NIC: JW11-RIPE
Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)