Disk and File System Administration - Solaris 9 System Administrator - page 160

Table 7.2 Fields of the Partition Table

Field Description

Partition Name Single hexadecimal character used as a name for the partition

(0 through f)

Tag Intended use of the partition—obsolete (see Table 7.3)

Flags A value of 1 indicates that the partition is not mountable; a value

of 10 indicates that the partition is read-only—obsolete

First Sector Number of the first sector in the partition

Sector Count Number of sectors in the partition

Last Sector Number of the last sector assigned to the partition

Mount Directory The directory where the partition (actually file system) was last

mounted

When partitions are defined, they can be assigned a hexadecimal tag that
identifies the intended use of the partition. These tags can be used during
system maintenance to quickly identify and select partitions. The tags are
stored in the tag field of the partition table. Table 7.3 provides a list of par-
tition tags.

Table 7.3 Partition Tags

Partition Type Tag Value

unassigned 0

boot 1

root 2

swap 3

usr 4

backup 5

stand 6

var 7

home 8

altsctr 9

cache a

The partition table can be created using the format or fmthard(1M) com-
mand. It can be displayed using the format or prtvtoc(1M) command.

Once the partition table has been populated with the appropriate information
(the disk partitions have been defined), file systems can be created within the
partitions; however, not all partitions are intended to hold a file system.