Reports information about a particular device or about all Adaptive Server database devices and dump devices.
sp_helpdevice [devname]
is the name of the device about which to report information. If you omit this parameter, sp_helpdevice reports on all devices.
Displays information about all the devices on Adaptive Server:
sp_helpdevice
device_name physical_name description ----------- -------------- ------------------------------------------- diskdump null disk, dump device master d_master special, default disk, dsync on,physical disk, 10 MB status cntrltype device_number low high ------ ---------- ------------- ---- ----- 16 2 0 0 20000 3 0 0 0 5120
Reports information about the dump device named diskdump:
sp_helpdevice diskdump
sp_helpdevice displays information on the specified device, when devname is given, or on all devices in master.dbo.sysdevices, when no argument is given.
The sysdevices table contains dump devices and database devices.
Database devices can be designated as default devices, which means that they can be used for database storage. This can occur when a user issues create database or alter database and does not specify a database device name or gives the keyword default. To make a database device a default database device, execute the system procedure sp_diskdefault.
Add database devices to the system with disk init. Add dump devices with sp_addumpdevice.
The number in the “status” column corresponds to the status description in the “description” column.
The “cntrltype” column specifies the controller number of the device. The “cntrltype” is 2 for disk or file dump devices and 3–8 for tape dump devices. For database devices, the “cntrltype” is usually 0 (unless your installation has a special type of disk controller).
The “device_number” column is 0 for dump devices, 0 for the master database device, and between 1 and 255 for other database devices. sp_helpdevice may report erroneous negative numbers for device numbers greater than 126.
The “low” and “high” columns represent virtual page numbers, each of which is unique among all the devices in Adaptive Server.
Any user can execute sp_helpdevice.
Commands disk init, dump database, dump transaction, load database, load transaction
System procedures sp_addumpdevice, sp_deviceattr, sp_diskdefault, sp_dropdevice, sp_logdevice
