Script to label multiple disks in Solaris

Many a times when storage team allocates storage from a EMC storage box, the disks are not labeled. Due to this you would see errors in the /var/adm/messages file like:

Jan 31 16:50:48 geeklab Corrupt label; wrong magic number
Jan 31 16:50:48 geeklab scsi: [ID 583861 kern.info] ssd12 at fp5: unit-address w20220080e517e28c,1: e8
Jan 31 16:50:48 geeklab genunix: [ID 936769 kern.info] ssd12 is /pci@12,600000/SUNW,qlc@0/fp@0,0/ssd@w20220080e517e28c,1
Jan 31 16:50:49 geeklab scsi: [ID 583861 kern.info] ssd8 at fp5: unit-address w20220080e517e28c,0: e8
Jan 31 16:50:49 geeklab genunix: [ID 936769 kern.info] ssd8 is /pci@12,600000/SUNW,qlc@0/fp@0,0/ssd@w20220080e517e28c,0
Jan 31 16:50:49 geeklab scsi: [ID 583861 kern.info] ssd2 at fp6: unit-address w20230080e517e28c,1f: e0
Jan 31 16:50:49 geeklab genunix: [ID 936769 kern.info] ssd2 is /pci@13,700000/SUNW,qlc@0/fp@0,0/ssd@w20230080e517e28c,1f
Jan 31 16:50:50 geeklab scsi: [ID 107833 kern.warning] WARNING: /pci@13,700000/SUNW,qlc@0/fp@0,0/ssd@w20230080e5

Now the easiest solution to this is to labels the disk in format command :

# format --> Select disk -> select partition table (p) --> label the disk (l)

Easy right ! But imagine a case when you have hundreds of disks to be labeled. In that case, we have a pretty neat script that can label all the disks in a go.

The script consists of :

1. a file containing format subcommands : label and quit
2. a file having all the disks you want to label.
3. the script itself

1. The format sub commands should be written in a separate file :

# cat /tmp/format.cmd
label

quit

2. Create a file listing all the disks you want to format.

# cat /tmp/disk_list
c8t2d0
c8t3d0
c8t4d0

3. Now finally the main script itself : /tmp/disk_label.sh . The script loops through all the disks in /tmp/disk_list and labels them one by one.

# cat disk_label.sh
for disk in `cat /tmp/disk_list` 

do
  
 format -s -f /tmp/format.cmd $disk
  
 echo "labeled $disk ....."

done

Running the script

Running the script is pretty easy. Just run the script without passing any arguments and all the disks will get labeled in no time.

# chmod +x /tmp/disk_label.sh
# ./disk_label.sh
Labeled c8t2d0 ......
Labeled c8t3d0 ......
Labeled c8t4d0 ......