DKCTL(8)

NAME
dkctl - program to manipulate disks

SYNOPSIS
dkctl device
dkctl device command [arg [...]]

DESCRIPTION
dkctl allows a user or system administrator to manipulate and configure disks in various ways. It is used by specifying a disk to manipulate, the command to perform, and any arguments the command may require. device is the disk (wdN, sdN, ...) containing the wedges unless noted otherwise. If dkctl is called without any command, it displays strategy, cache, and all of the wedges of the specified device.

COMMANDS
The following commands are supported:

addwedge name startblk blkcnt ptype
    Define a “wedge” on the specified disk starting at block number startblk and spanning blkcnt blocks. You need to create the partition first with fdisk(8) or gpt(8), dkctl will just name it. The wedge will have the volume name name and the partition type ptype. Valid choices for ptype would be unused, swap, ffs, lfs, ext2fs, cd9660, ados, hfs, msdos, filecore, raidframe, ccd, appleufs, ntfs, and cgd.

    The device name of the virtual block device assigned to the wedge will be displayed after the wedge has been successfully created. See dk(4) for more information about disk wedges.

badsector flush | list | retry
    Used for managing the kernel's bad sector list for wd(4) devices. The software bad sector list is only maintained if the option “WD_SOFTBADSECT” was specified on kernel configuration.

    flush
        Clears the in kernel list of bad sectors.

    list
        Prints out the list of bad sector ranges recorded by the kernel.

    retry
        Flushes the in kernel list and then retries all of the previously recorded bad sectors, causing the list to self update. This option can only be used with character devices.

delwedge dk
    Delete the wedge specified by its device name dk from the specified disk.

getcache
    Get and display the cache enables for the specified device.

getwedgeinfo
    Display information about the specified disk wedge. device in this case is the wedge name.

keeplabel [yes | no]
    Specify to keep or drop the in-core disklabel on the last close of the disk device. (Keep if yes is specified, drop if no is specified.)

listwedges [-e] [-q]
    List all of the wedges configured on the specified disk. With -e exit with a non-zero exit status if there are no wedges configured on that disk. With -q (quiet mode) there is no output related to the wedges that do, or do not, exist.

makewedges
    Delete all wedges configured on the specified disk, and autodiscover the wedges again. Wedges that are in use are not deleted and conflicting or overlapping wedges are not created. You need to list wedges to find out what has changed.

setcache none | r | w | rw [save]
    Set the cache enables for the specified device. The enables are as follows:

    none
        Disable all caches on the disk.

    r   Enable the read cache, and disable all other caches on the disk.

    w   Enable the write cache, and disable all other caches on the disk.

    rw  Enable both the read and write caches on the disk.

    save
        If specified, and the cache enables are savable, saves the cache enables in the disk's non-volatile parameter storage.

strategy [name]
    Get and set the disk I/O scheduler (buffer queue strategy) on the drive. If you do not provide a name argument, the currently selected strategy will be shown. To set the bufq strategy, the name argument must be specified. name must be the name of one of the built-in kernel disk I/O schedulers. To get the list of supported schedulers, use the following command:

        $ sysctl kern.bufq.strategies

synccache [force]
    Causes the cache on the disk to be synchronized, flushing all dirty write cache blocks to the media. If force is specified, the cache synchronization command will be issued even if the kernel does not believe that there are any dirty cache blocks in the disk's cache.

Note: The addwedge and delwedge commands only modify the in-kernel representation of disks; for modifying information on the disks themselves, refer to fdisk(8) or gpt(8).

SEE ALSO
ioctl(2), dk(4), sd(4), wd(4), disklabel(5), atactl(8), fdisk(8), gpt(8), scsictl(8)

HISTORY
The dkctl command first appeared in NetBSD 1.6.

AUTHORS
The dkctl command was written by Jason R. Thorpe of Wasabi Systems, Inc.