New to Solaris, what are the c0d0p# means?

Hi,

I am very new to solaris and would like to know the meanings for c0d0p# ?

I have two IDE drives, and they are showing up as c0d0 and c0d1. According to my book, s# means the slices (partitions), and I do see they are showing up at /dev/rdsk/c0d0s1 ... up to s15, but what about the p#? I see there are five of these /dev/rdsk/c0d0p0 ... up to p4

Thanks!

p0, p1 etc are fdisk partitions.

If I understand correctly, I use fdisk to partition the new disk first, and then use format to create the appropriate partitions?

On x86 machines yes.

What would be different for sparc machine? Thanks for your help.

On SPARC there are no fdisk partitions, so slices are placed directly on the disk.

Use "format" on Sparc to see the partitions on your disk. Select a drive number (usually "0" or "1") then "partition" then "print" to print the partition table for that disk. You can also use something like "prtvtoc /dev/rdsk/c0t0d0s0" -- the exact numbers depend on your setup, but the meanings are:
c0 = controller zero
t0 = target zero or LUN = Logical Unit Number
d0 = device zero
s0 = slice zero (also called a partition)

If your were setting up an x86 machine you'd have to use "fmthard" either instead of or before using "format", to partition at a higher level. The word partition is overused and can refer both to an OS partition (Windows or Unix) and to a slice which is why Sun came up with the word "slice" probably.

---------- Post updated at 03:38 PM ---------- Previous update was at 03:36 PM ----------

Uh, sorry, I meant fdisk, not fmthard.

p1 to p4 are fdisk primary partitions, p5+ are extended partitions when supported. p0 isn't an fdisk partition but the whole disk.