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kendzi87
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Problem clear partitioning information in ESXi 6.0 and sg3_utils

I need to clear partitioning information in ESXi.
I tried the DD utility "dd if=/dev/zero of="/vmfs/devices/disks/DeviceName" bs=512 count=34 conv=notrunc" but I am getting  "dd: /vmfs/devices/disks/DeviceName: Function not implemented". Somwhere i Found information that I should use sg3_utils tool sg_dd. How to install it on esxi? I try to download it on centOS 6.6 and build it and then move to esxi. But i am getting: ./sg_dd: eval: line 1: gcc: not found.
Is it possible to do it or should I try something else.

Additional info:

partedUtil getptbl gives:

gpt

48641 255 63 781422768

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continuum
Immortal
Immortal

Wow - compiling a dd-replacement to run one command ?
Respect - you must be even crazier than me Smiley Wink

I see this message quite often after recovery-tasks.
My theory is that this message  in most cases means that there is still a configuration entry active that prevents a clean unmount.
The partition that is used by that stale entry may no longer even exist - but the write protection that is required by that parameter is still active.
scratch-config, heartbeat-config and a few more details may have similar results.

In cases where I dont want to search and are in a hurry I  simply use dd from a Linux LiveCD - either via sshfs - then I mount ESXi filesystem to /esxi and then talk to the device as /esxi/dev/disks/<device> or directly by booting the ESXi into Linux.


________________________________________________
Do you need support with a VMFS recovery problem ? - send a message via skype "sanbarrow"
I do not support Workstation 16 at this time ...

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