Service Partition - Sun Microsystems Sun Fire V60x Manual

4.12.3

Service Partition

This menu item (see Figure 4-32) allows you to find, create, format, or remove a
service partition on the hard disk of the Sun Fire V60x and Sun Fire V65x servers.
Caution – If you remove the service partition, it possible that you may have to
reformat the hard disk to create it again. Reformatting the disk removes all
partitions and destroys all data on the disk.
If you are just updating the service partition, you should reformat the service
partition and install the updated software using option 4 shown in Figure 4-34.
You can create service partitions on any disk you specify, as long as a service
partition or any other partition does not already exist. There is only one service
partition allowed. Some operating systems automatically create the service partition
when they install.
If you want to reformat the service partition and copy the CD contents to the service
partition, select Service Partition > Run Service Partition Administrator and use
option 4 (Format service partition and install software) from the resulting menu (see
Figure 4-34). This updates the service partition only.
If the Sun Fire V60x and Sun Fire V65x servers do not have a service partition
installed for some reason (for example, if you running Red Hat Linux), the Service
Partition Administrator tool on the CD will not be able to create a service partition.
However, from Linux you can create a type 12 (Compaq Diagnostics) partition,
which is the only partition type the CD tool understands.
If you are performing a generic Red Hat install, you should create the service
partition first and then install Red Hat Linux using the option to preserve existing
partitions. As shipped from the factory, the Sun Fire V60x and Sun Fire V65x servers
service partition already exists (sda1 for single drive systems and sdb1 for dual drive
systems). Just make sure during Red Hat Linux installation to leave these partitions
alone.
If you have a server with preinstalled Solaris 9 software, you do not have to create a
service partition. If you are performing a custom Solaris installation and the service
partition does not exist on the server, you will need to install the service partition
before performing the Solaris installation.
Chapter 4 Powering On and Configuring the Server 4-47