rawutl - an overlooked utility

While looking in $ORACLE_HOME/bin of a 12.1.0.2 DB i noticed an executable I'd never seen before and wondered what it did - so i ran it.....


[oracle]# rawutl
Usage: rawutl <option>
where <option> :
        -s <raw_device_name>: size of given raw device in bytes usable by Oracle
        -h: prints usage.

So lets pass in a raw volume and see if it works

rawutl -s /dev/mapper/oracleasm-disk1
64427130880

So the device is 64GB

Kind of useful i guess......

I then went back to look at some older homes to see when this appeared (thinking it was a 12c thing), seems it's been there since 10.2 (and maybe 10.2 - but i didn't have a home to check that in) - somehow I'd completely overlooked in.

Not that useful i guess as there are many ways to get that same info - but this is maybe the simplest....?