[geeks] Raw disk access under Solaris

[JP Hindin]

Mornin' all, hopefully you (US'ns at least) had relaxing long weekends;

I have a strong feeling like this is a lot simpler than I'm finding it and 
my googlefu is completely failing me on finding a reasonable solution 
here, so I am throwing myself upon the mercy of the wise Sun geeks out 
there (impress me, Mouse).

I'm trying to make an image of a non-Sun Differential SCSI disk on an 
Ultra2 running Solaris 9. The only HVD controllers I own are the fairly 
standard Sun qLogic controllers, so I'm limited to using this platform 
with what I have.

I expected it would be as simple as connecting the drive and doing a dd on 
slice2, which I was under the impression was the whole disk, but whenever 
I try I get an 'I/O Error'. What I'm wondering is if the reason it's 
failing is because it's _not_ a Sun disk and so while Solaris is 
enumerating the slices/partitions, since there isn't actually a readable 
partition map for Solaris it's bombing out.

I've made certain the /dev/dsk/ drive is pointing to the right /devices/ 
qLogic controller and drive ID, the drive has internal terminators enabled 
so it's a direct SCSI cable between the controller and the drive. The only 
other thing I'm doing that might be considered out of the norm is I have 
the write protect jumper enabled on the drive itself.

Am I mistaken on my assumption of where this issue is? Is there actually a 
lower-level access problem with the drive? (It is correctly identified by 
a probe-scsi-all)

My thanks to all;

  - JP