[rescue] reading old unix disks from Linux

Phil Stracchino phils at caerllewys.net
Fri Apr 26 08:49:23 CDT 2019


On 4/26/19 5:46 AM, Andrew K. Bressen wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> I have old SCSI drives I'm trying to read, and I'm running into a number
> of different issues I'd welcome feedback on.
> 
> I've got drives from PCs, Macs, Suns, and DEC machines, and I'm using a
> 32 bit linux box (3.x kernel) to read them all. One thing I'm 
> wondering is if I'd have fewer problems booting off a FreeBSD or NetBSD
> liveCD. 
> 
> Mostly it's gone well (no sw problems with PC or Mac disks!), but here
> are some of the fiddly things I've been dealing with on the DECstation
> and Sun disks and would love help/suggestions on. 
> 
> Software stack:
> 
> (1)
> Linux often will see a drive as multiple partitions, 
> like sdc1 sdc2 sdc3 sdc4, but no linux partion tool
> I've found shows me what the boundaries actually are, 
> for example parted might say 
>   Number  Start  End    Size   File system  Flags
>    1      0.00B  105MB  105MB  sun-ufs
> 
> on a disk with as many as 7 partitions. 
> 
> How do I see what the partitions actually are?


Make sure you compiled your kernel with bsd disklabel support.  And as
many others as you think you might need.  They're not all enabled by
default out-of-the-box.


-- 
  Phil Stracchino
  Babylon Communications
  phils at caerllewys.net
  phil at co.ordinate.org
  Landline: +1.603.293.8485
  Mobile:   +1.603.998.6958


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