Ik werk veel in mixed omgevingen en daar komt het nog wel eens voor dat je een nieuwe SAN disk krijgt die eerder aan een AIX systeem heeft gehangen. Als je dan fdisk opstart voor die disk krijg je de volgende melding.

[rtestA]# fdisk /dev/sdi

        There is a valid AIX label on this disk.
        Unfortunately Linux cannot handle these
        disks at the moment.  Nevertheless some
        advice:
        1. fdisk will destroy its contents on write.
        2. Be sure that this disk is NOT a still vital
           part of a volume group. (Otherwise you may
           erase the other disks as well, if unmirrored.)
        3. Before deleting this physical volume be sure
           to remove the disk logically from your AIX
           machine.  (Otherwise you become an AIXpert).

Command (m for help):

Je zal dus eerst nieuwe legen DOS partition table moeten aanmaken. Dit kan je doen door de o optie te gebruiken.

Command (m for help): o
Building a new DOS disklabel. Changes will remain in memory only,
until you decide to write them. After that, of course, the previous
content won't be recoverable.


The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 9086.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
   (e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)
Warning: invalid flag 0x0000 of partition table 4 will be corrected by w(rite)

Command (m for help): w
The partition table has been altered!

Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.
Syncing disks.
[testA]#

Vervolgens kan je de disk weer gebruiken zoals je gewend bent.

[testA]# fdisk -l /dev/sdi

Disk /dev/sdi: 74.7 GB, 74742497280 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9086 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System