mark@ncsu.UUCP (Mark Lanzo) (04/04/86)
As a person who is NOT a Unix wizard, I cast a plea for help out to the net! Specifically, I am wondering if there is anyone out there who has experience installing and operating external hard disk drives on MicroVaxes, where the drive is not a DEC drive. I have a System Industries model 9722 disk drive, which I am using on a MicroVax II system running Ultrix (-32m?). My problem is that I do not know precisely how to go about setting up the disk for proper operation. I would like to set up the disk so that most of the disk space is used for regular user files, and a smaller portion of it be set aside for swapping purposes. I have the disk up and apparently working for regular user file storage, although I question whether or not it's really working correctly. The disk is supposed to have a capacity of 160 Meg (unformatted), however by the time formatting et al are done, I seem to only get about 100 Meg worth of real storage. This strikes me as an excessive loss, but I do not know how to check the validity of this. I also do not understand Unix'es disk-partitioning scheme. I have set up an entry in /etc/disktab to define the drive parameters, and used 'newfs' to build a filing system on the disk, although I didn't know precisely what I was doing. Newfs did its thing, but gave me warning messages about a "partition table" which overrode "/etc/disktab". I defined partitions a,b, and c on the drive. I also tried to use "swapon" to enable swapping on the disk (using its "b" partition), but "swapon" invariably responds with "/dev/ra4b: No such device". /dev/ra4b does exist; /dev/ra4a thru /dev/ra4h were apparently all generated automatically for me when I used "/dev/MAKEDEV", so I don't understand what "swapon" is trying to tell me. I regret that my documentation (to use the term loosely :-) ) doesn't shed any light on the situation, not even to the extent of telling me what the diagnostic messages mean. I would greatly appreciate any help that anyone can provide me with. Please send any replies by direct e-mail. Thanks in advance, Mark ************************************************************************ * I may be contacted at: Usenet: ...decvax!mcnc!ncsu!mark * * USnail: Communications Unlimited * * 4605 Western Blvd. * * Raleigh, NC 27606 * * Vox: (919) 851-1368 * ************************************************************************