Editing Solaris 10 System Administration Part I (section)

=== partition tables & reserved space ===

to create ufs in Solaris system space must be available on disk & that space must be defined in a partition

* disk labels record the locations & boundaries of disk slicees
* the label that contains slice definitions is also known as volume table of contents (VTOC)
* on SPARC systems VTOC is located in sector 0 on disk
* on x86/x64 systems VTOC is located in second sector of the Solaris fdisk partition. on x86/x64 systems slice 8 occupies the first cylinder of Solaris fdisk partition, & protects x86/x64 VTOC


Solaris OS file systems do not use the following sectors of the slices in which they reside:
* sector 0 - reserved for VTOC on SPARC systems, if if a ufs file system on a SPARC system occupies a slice that starts on first disk cylinder, this sector would contain the SPARC VTOC. Every ufs on SPARC & x86/x64 systems skip sector 0
* sector 1 - 15 - these sectors are reserved for bootstrap program (bootblk) used by SPARC systems. only a slice that contains a file system from which a SPARC system boots would contain a bootstrap program in these sectors. Every ufs on SPARC & x86/x64 systems skip sector 1 - 15.

Solaris OS ufs structures begin at sector 16 of the slice that holds the file system on both SPARC & x86/x64 systems.