Question concerning Raid Manager default partition table

[Mike Spooner]

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James McPherson wrote:
> 
> >Andreas wrote:
> >>James McPherson writes:
> >> > Andreas Sindermann writes:
> >> > > Why not simply use slice 2 which covers the whole LUN?
> >> > The short answer to this is, because if you do then your configuration is
> >not
> >> > supported. The longer answer is that there are some applications (dd,
> >backups
> >> > etc) for which you need to be able to grab the _whole_ disk all at once
> >without
> >> > worrying about partitions.
> >>Hmm, I can't see why slice 2 is special in this case. It's a slice
> >>that covers all blocks, just as intended (she wanted to have a slice
> >>covering the complete disk). What's the difference between slice 0
> >>covering all blocks and slice 2 covering all blocks?
> >
> I think (apart from the historical reasons) that the difference is that slice 2
> is supposed to be transparent to the OS. I don't know whether there's some hard
> coding of this in the solaris kernel or not.

No, it isn't in the SunOS 5.x kernel or utilities.
However, it IS hardcoded in some third-party utilities and
also in many customer-written administrative scripts.
It is also hardcoded in the SunOS 4.x kernel and some SunOS 4.x commands.
 
> I'll be chasing this one internally for my own peace of mind (and I'll post the
> answers here too).
> 
> In the mean time, the answer(s) are that you just don't use slice 2 to put a
> filesystem on, no way, no how, because it renders your system unsupported by
> Sun; and there are applications out there which depend on slice 2 being a
> transparent whole of disk slice.
> 
> I know that's not terribly informative, but the first reason at least can be
> pretty important to people, especially if they have support contracts with Sun
> >;)
> 
> Regards,
> James C. McPherson
> 
> --
> Customer Technical Support Engineer      828 Pacific Highway
> Sun Microsystems Australia Pty Ltd       Gordon NSW 2072
> Support Helpline: 1-800-555-786