[rescue] fx a large drive under IRIX 6.5

[Sheldon T. Hall]

Mike Meredith says...
> On Tue, 27 Jan 2004 20:02:31 -0500, Sheldon T. Hall wrote:
> > > http://blackhairy.demon.co.uk/sformat
> >
> > Ummmm, I downloaded it, and I dunno ...
> >
> > /usr/local/bin # file sformat
> > sformat:        ELF N32 MSB mips-4 dynamic executable (not stripped)
>
> Well that's a surprise! Somebody forgot the principle of least
> astonishment (I didn't ask for mips-4 which you normally have to).
> Nifty build system, but sformat is one of those things where being
> clever isn't as useful as it normally would be.
>
> As you've already now got a suitable binary (and I haben't had any
> caffeine yet), I won't look at rebuilding it.

So far, I've tried 2 different binaries, built by two different list
members.  Both report stuff like

scsibus1:
(NULL POINTER),(NULL POINTER),(NULL POINTER),(NULL POINTER),(NULL
POINTER),(NULL POINTER),(NULL POINTER),(NULL POINTER) 1,0,0 100) *
(NULL POINTER),(NULL POINTER),(NULL POINTER),(NULL POINTER),(NULL
POINTER),(NULL POINTER),(NULL POINTER),(NULL POINTER) 1,1,0 101) 'SGI     '
'0664N1D         ' '6s61' Disk
(NULL POINTER),(NULL POINTER),(NULL POINTER),(NULL POINTER),(NULL
POINTER),(NULL POINTER),(NULL POINTER),(NULL POINTER) 1,2,0 102) 'SGI     '
'0664N1D         ' '6s61' Disk
(NULL POINTER),(NULL POINTER),(NULL POINTER),(NULL POINTER),(NULL
POINTER),(NULL POINTER),(NULL POINTER),(NULL POINTER) 1,3,0 103) 'SGI     '
'0664N1D         ' '6s61' Disk
(NULL POINTER),(NULL POINTER),(NULL POINTER),(NULL POINTER),(NULL
POINTER),(NULL POINTER),(NULL POINTER),(NULL POINTER) 1,4,0 104) *
(NULL POINTER),(NULL POINTER),(NULL POINTER),(NULL POINTER),(NULL
POINTER),(NULL POINTER),(NULL POINTER),(NULL POINTER) 1,5,0 105) *
(NULL POINTER),(NULL POINTER),(NULL POINTER),(NULL POINTER),(NULL
POINTER),(NULL POINTER),(NULL POINTER),(NULL POINTER) 1,6,0 106) *
(NULL POINTER),(NULL POINTER),(NULL POINTER),(NULL POINTER),(NULL
POINTER),(NULL POINTER),(NULL POINTER),(NULL POINTER) 1,7,0 107) *

which probably isn't right....

The first one claimed to have formated the disk (or maybe one partition,
it's hard to tell), but prtvtoc still couldn't make sense of it.  I'm now
trying the second copy, which is vastly smaller than the first one.

This is turning out to be lots more fun than I expected.

-Shel