More on adding hard disks

[Gregory G. Woodbury]

dougp at vail.ICO.ISC.COM (Doug Pintar) writes:
>To anyone who was offended by the tone of my previous posting on adding hard
>disks under 386/ix 2.0.2, I would like to publicly apologize.  I had hoped
>the smiley would forestall the flames, forgetting how frustrating it is when
>you're fighting with a system that seems hostile.  I in no way meant to
>trivialize Gregory Woodbury's experiences with our software.

	Accepted, and in turn, I apologize for the particular harshness
with which I responded.  It is not fair to stigmatize all of ISC for a
careless remark.  I should not assume that just because you work at a
place that you represent the place (type that 1000 times, no cut and
paste! ;-).

>The first article I found on this subject was
><1990May27.092900.828 at wolves.uucp> in which there is no mention of failures
>of the sysadm scripts.  I have personally installed several add-on SCSI
>devices using sysadm.  It hasn't failed me yet.  I'm a little unclear on
>the comments that the /etc/disk* routines don't work right, as there is
>no documentation on how they are SUPPOSED to work.  They are designed to
>be run from a script that knows exactly what each one of them does, NOT
>to be run by hand by someone unfamiliar with the processes involved.

	Let me suggest then that they should be in /usr/lbin rather than
/etc.  lbin was made specifically for sysadm as distinct from a local
bin of some sort and stuff there is sysadm specific.

> the issue here is setting up a disk, NOT how
>sysadm scripts are built.

	Since you claim that the functionality is totally contained in
the sysadm script, the structure might be an issue.

>>        5.  backup /etc/partitions and run /etc/disksetup
>>                this will fail! but partition stanzas will be placed in
>>                /etc/partitions for your selected configuration.
>
>The problem here is that /etc/disksetup is the WRONG program to run at this
>point.  'disksetup' is designed to build things on BOOT disks, and hence
>scribbles on /etc/partitions with gleeful abandon.  A glance through the
>sysadm addharddisk script shows it using '/etc/adddisk', which is the
>correct program.  
	And, this is where my attempt to use "addharddisk" failed when I
tried it.  (Yes, I did look to sysadm first!  When it didn't work I made
some bad assumptions about its correctness. i.e. it was not correct,
don't pay attention to it ;-(( )

>                  It writes the new disk's entries in /tmp/partitions.  This
>file is appended to /etc/partitions as the final act of adding a new disk,
>so your original version of the file is safe until the process is completed.
>As for all the other operations in Gregory's list, they ARE performed by the
>sysadm addharddisk function.  Each filesystem is labelled and has a
>lost+found directory created on it.
>
>  As for a problem with ISC code related to the
>adding of hard disks and controllers, if you could show me a real example of
>a problem (and not merely a perception of one) I'd be glad to pass it along
>to our support staff.

	Gladly.  The first attempt to use the "addharddisk" command
failed to identify the disk  or access it.  I elected initially to not
format or surface analyze the disk (since there were partitions and
filesystems from another system that we wanted to access.)  A little bit
of information (or its lack) goes a long way here and I knew that the
system could see the disk properly in one sense (it fsck'd okay and a
cat of the device sections showed the data - fsdb even worked!) it just
wouldn't mount the darn thing!  The "Maintenance procedures" section has
a few mentions of using the sysadm procedure, but it also does not
provide much guidance for unusual cases. [additionally, on page 61, the
paragraph numbered 4 (December 88 printing of manual) is just plain
confusing - even if you know what you are doing.]

	Given that there was a problem with the sysadm command, I
decided to "wing it" and the obvious 2nd choice (the /etc/diskadd
script) also has a direct bug if you are trying to add something like
disk10. (around line 96 of 196)  [Excuse me, /etc/diskadd is probably 
not supported and undocumented, if its not supposed to be used, then 
please remove it!]

	In any case, between a bit of blind pride on my part, and some
very unclear documentation on ISC's part (I mean, who actually reads the
manuals or indexes ;-) it took me several days to do something that
should have only taken a few hours.
-- 
Gregory G. Woodbury @ The Wolves Den UNIX, Durham NC
UUCP: ...dukcds!wolves!ggw   ...mcnc!wolves!ggw           [use the maps!]
Domain: ggw at cds.duke.edu     ggw%wolves at mcnc.mcnc.org
[The line eater is a boojum snark! ]           <standard disclaimers apply>