Sparc64 partitions compatible with PC?

[Marcel Moolenaar]

On Jul 17, 2008, at 9:56 AM, Didrik Madheden wrote:

> I have a Sparc box that I use mainly as an FTP server. (SunBlad 100  
> if it
> makes a ny difference) What I want to do now is to move that disk to  
> an
> x86 box.
> The disk is partitioned in the following way: A single big native
> partition, with a number of labels. (Or are disklabels the native
> partitioning on Sparc? I don't remember)
> Anyway, I have a couple of small labels for the usual system stuff  
> and a
> big one for storage. What I want to do is wipe the system related  
> labels
> and only keep the one used for storage. (And consequently do a fresh
> install on the PC)
> My concern however is that the Sun partitioning will be incompatible  
> with
> PC partitioning. If so, can anyone give advice on how to move the  
> disk to
> a PC?
> Since it's a big disk, I'd like to avoid mirroring it.

FreeBSD 7-STABLE supports sparc64 labeling, aka vtoc8. This
is done with gpart. You can build and load the geom_part_vtoc8
kernel module and it'll automatically detect the partitioning
of the disk. You can use the gpart(8) tool to look at the
partitioning and even relabel the disk.

I don't know if UFS is going to give you problems with the
endianness though...

FYI,

-- 
Marcel Moolenaar
xcllnt at mac.com