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When Good Disks Go Bad: Dealing with Disk Failures
Under LVM
Abstract.............................................................................................................................................. 3
Background ........................................................................................................................................ 3
1. Preparing for Disk Recovery .............................................................................................................. 4
Defining a Recovery Strategy............................................................................................................. 4
Using Hot-Swappable Disks............................................................................................................... 4
Using Alternate Links (PVLinks) ........................................................................................................... 4
LVM Online Disk Replacement (LVM OLR) ........................................................................................... 5
Mirroring Critical Information, Especially the Root Volume Group .......................................................... 5
Creating Recovery Media ................................................................................................................. 6
Other Recommendations for Optimal System Recovery ......................................................................... 6
2. Recognizing a Failing Disk................................................................................................................ 9
I/O Errors in the System Log.............................................................................................................. 9
Disk Failure Notification Messages from Diagnostics .......................................................................... 10
LVM Command Errors..................................................................................................................... 10
3. Confirming Disk Failure .................................................................................................................. 12
4. Gathering Information About a Failing Disk ...................................................................................... 15
5. Removing the Disk ......................................................................................................................... 18
Removing a Mirror Copy from a Disk ............................................................................................... 18
Moving the Physical Extents to Another Disk ...................................................................................... 19
Removing the Disk from the Volume Group........................................................................................ 20
Replacing a LVM Disk in an HP Serviceguard Cluster Volume Group.................................................... 25
Disk Replacement Scenarios ............................................................................................................ 25
Disk Replacement Process Flowchart................................................................................................. 28
Replacing a Mirrored Nonboot Disk................................................................................................. 31
Replacing an Unmirrored Nonboot Disk ........................................................................................... 33
Disk Replacement Flowchart ............................................................................................................ 39
Conclusion........................................................................................................................................ 42
Appendix A: Using Device File Types................................................................................................... 43
Appendix B: Device Special File Naming Model ................................................................................... 44
New Options to Specify the DSF Naming Model ............................................................................... 44
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Behavioral Differences of Commands After Disabling the Legacy Naming Model .................................. 45
Appendix C: Volume Group Versions and LVM Configuration Files ......................................................... 46
Volume Group Version ................................................................................................................... 46
Device Special Files ....................................................................................................................... 46
lvmtab, lvmtab_p ........................................................................................................................... 47
Appendix D: Procedures..................................................................................................................... 48
Mirroring the Root Volume on PA-RISC Servers .................................................................................. 48
Mirroring the Root Volume on Integrity Servers .................................................................................. 50
Appendix E: LVM Error Messages........................................................................................................ 54
LVM Command Error Messages....................................................................................................... 54
All LVM commands..................................................................................................................... 54
lvchange ................................................................................................................................ 54
lvextend ................................................................................................................................ 54
lvlnboot ................................................................................................................................ 55
pv change ................................................................................................................................ 56
vgcfgbackup .......................................................................................................................... 56
vgcfgrestore ........................................................................................................................ 57
vgchange ................................................................................................................................ 57
vgcreate ................................................................................................................................ 58
vgdisplay .............................................................................................................................. 59
vgextend ................................................................................................................................ 59
vgimport ............................................................................................................................... . 60
Syslog Error Messages.................................................................................................................... 60
Appendix F: Moving a Root Disk to a New Disk or Another Disk............................................................. 61
Appendix G: Recreating Volume Group Information .............................................................................. 62
Appendix H: Disk Relocation and Recovery Using vgexport and vgimport ................................................ 63
Appendix I: Splitting Mirrors to Perform Backups ................................................................................... 65
Appendix J: Moving an Existing Root Disk to a New Hardware Path ....................................................... 66
For more information.......................................................................................................................... 67
Call to Action.................................................................................................................................... 67
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Abstract
This white paper discusses how to deal with disk failures under the HP-UX Lo gical Volume Manager
(LVM). It is i ntended for system administrators or operators who have experience with LVM. It includes
strategies to prepare for disk failure, ways to recognize that a disk has failed, and steps to remove or
replace a fa iled disk.
Background
Whether managing a workstation or server, your goals include minimizing system downtime and
maximizing data availability. Hardware problems such as disk failures can disrupt those goals.
Replacing disks can be a daunting task, given the variety of hardware featur es such as hot-swappable
disks, and software features such as mirroring or online disk replacement you can encounter.
LVM provides features to let you maximize data availability and improve system uptime. This paper
explains how you can use LVM to minimize the impact of disk failures to your system and your data. It
also addresses the following topics:
• Preparing for Disk Recovery: what you can do before a disk goes bad. This includes guidelines on
logical volume and volume group organization, software features to in stall, and other best
practices.
• Recognizing a Failing Disk: how you can tell that a disk is having problems. This covers some of the
error messages related to disk failure you might encounter in the system’s error log, in your
electronic mail, or from LVM commands.
• Confirming Disk Failure: what you should check to make sure the disk is failing. This includes a
simple three-step approach to validate a disk failure if you do not have o nline diagnostics.
• Gathering Information About a Failing Disk: what you must know before you remove or replace the
disk. This includes whether the disk is hot-swappable, what logical volumes are located on the disk,
and what recovery options are available for the data.
• Removing the Disk: how to permanently remove the disk from your LVM configuration, rather than
replace it.
• Replacing the Disk: how to replace a failing disk while minimizing system downtime and data loss.
This section provides a high-level overview of the process and the specifics of each step. The exact
procedure varies, depending on your LVM configuration and what hardware and software features
you have installed, so several disk replacement scenarios are included. The section concludes with
a flowchart of the disk replacement process.
You do not have to wait for a disk failure to begin preparing for failure recovery. This paper can help
you be ready when a failure does occur.
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1. Preparing for Disk Recovery
Forewarned is forearmed. Knowing that hard disks will fail eventually, you can take some
precautionary measures to minimize your downtime, maximize your data availability, and simplify the
recovery process. Consider the following guidelines before you experience a disk failure.
Defining a Recovery Strategy
As you create logical volumes, choose one of the following recovery strategies. Each choice strikes a
balance between cost, data availability, and speed of data recovery.
• Mirroring: If you mirror a logical volume on a separate disk, the mirror copy is online and
available while recovering from a disk failure. With hot-swappable disks, users will have no
indication that a disk was lost.
• Restoring from backup: If you choose not to mirror, make sure you have a consistent backup
plan for any important logical volumes. The tradeoff is that you will need fewer disks, but you will
lose time while you restore data from backup media, and you will lose any data changed since
your last backup.
• Initializing from scratch: If you do not mirror or back up a logical volu me, be aware that you
will lose data if the underlying hard disk fails. This can be acceptable in some cases, such as a
temporary or scratch volume.
Using H ot-Swappable Disks
The hot-swap feature implies the ability to remove or add an inactive hard disk drive module to a
system while power is still on and the SCSI bus is still active. In other words, you can replace or
remove a hot-swappable disk from a system without turning off the powe r to the entire system.
Consult your system hardware manuals for information about which disks in your system are hot-
swappable. Spec ifications for other hard disks are available in their installation manuals at
http://docs.hp.com.
Using Alternate Links (PVLinks)
On all supported HP-UX releases, LVM supports Alternate Links to a device to enable continuous
access to the device if the primary link fails. This multiple link or multipath solution increases data
availability, but does not allow the multiple paths to be used simultaneous ly. In such cases, the device
naming model used for the representation of the mass storage devices is called the legacy naming
model.
Starting with the HP-UX 11i v3 release, there is a new feature introduced in the Mass Storage
Subsystem that also supports multiple paths to a device and allows access to multiple paths
simultaneously. The device naming model used in this case to represent the mass storage devices is
called the agile naming model. The management of the multipathed devices is available outside of
LVM using the next generation mass storage stack. Agile addressing creates a single persistent DSF
for each mass storage device regardless of the number of hardware paths to the disk. The mass
storage stack in HP-UX 11i v3 uses this agility to provide transparent multipathing. When the new
mass storage subsystem multipath behavior is enabled on the system (HP-UX 11i v3 and later), the
mass storage subsystem balances the I/O load across the valid paths.
You can enable and disable the new mass storage subsystem multipath behavior and disabled
through the use of the scsimgr command. For more information, see scsimgr(1M).
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Starting with the HP-UX 11i v3 release, HP no longer requires or recommends that you configure LVM
with alternate links. However, it is possible to maintain the traditional LVM behavior. To do so, both
of the following criteria must be met:
• Only the legacy device special file naming convention is used in the LVM volume group
configuration.
• The scsimgr command is used to disable the Mass Storage Subsystem multipath behavior.
See the following appendices for more information:
• Appendix A documents the two different types of device files supported starting with HP-UX 11i v3
release
• Appendix B documents the two different types of device special naming models supported starting
HP-UX 11i v3 release
Also, see the LVM Migration from legacy to agile naming model HP-UX 11i v3 release white paper.
This white paper discusses the migration of LVM volume group configurations from legacy to the agile
naming model.
LVM Online Disk Replacement (LVM OLR)
LVM online disk replacement (LVM OLR) simplifies the replacement of disks under LVM. With LVM
OLR, you can temporarily disable LVM use of a disk in an active volume group. Without it, you
cannot keep LVM from accessing a disk unless you deactivate the volume group or remove the logical
volumes on the disk.
The LVM OLR feature introduces a new option, –a, to pvchange command. The –a option disables
or re-enables a specified path to an LVM disk. For more information on LVM OLR, see the LVM Online
Disk Replacement (LVM OLR) white paper.
Starting with the HP-UX 11i v3 release, when the Mass Storage Subsystem multipath behavior is
enabled on the system and LVM is configured with persistent device files, dis abling specific paths to a
device using pvchange –a n command does not stop I/Os to that path as they did in earlier
releases because of the Mass Storage Stack native multipath functionality. Detaching an entire
physical volume (all paths to the physical volume) using the pvchange –a N command is still
available in such cases to perform Online Disk Replacement. When the Mass Storage Subsystem
multipath behavior is disabled and legacy DSFs are used to configure LVM volu me groups, the
traditional LVM OLR behavior is maintained.
On HP-UX 11i v1 and HP-UX 11i v2 releases, LVM OLR is delivered in two patches: one patch for the
kernel and one patch for the pvchange command.
Both command and kernel components are required to enable LVM OLR (ap plicable for 11i v1 and
11i v2 releases):
• For HP-UX 11i v1, install patches PHKL_31216 and PHCO_30698 or their superseding patches.
• For HP-UX 11i v2, install patches PHKL_32095 and PHCO_31709 or their superseding patches.
Note: Starting with HP-UX 11i v3, the LVM OLR feature is available as part of base operating
system.
Mirroring Critical Information, Especially the Root Volume Group
By using mirror copies of the root, boot, and primary swap logical volumes on another disk, you can
use the copies to keep your system in operation if any of these logical volumes fail.
Mirroring requires the add-on product HP MirrorDisk/UX (B2491BA). This is an optional product
available on the HP-UX 11i application release media. To confirm that you have HP MirrorDisk/UX
installed on your system, enter the swlist command. For example:
5
# swlist -l fileset | grep -i mirror
LVM.LVM-MIRROR-RUN B.11.23 LVM Mirror
The process of mirroring is usually straightforward, and can be easily ac complished using the system
administration manager SAM, or with a single lvextend command. These processes are
documented in Managing Systems and Workgroups (11i v1 and v2) and System Administrator's
Guide: Logical Volume Management (11i v3). The only mirroring setup task that takes several steps is
mirroring the root disk. See Appendix D for the recommended procedure to add a root disk mirror. .
There are three corollaries to the mirroring recommendation:
1. Use the strict allocation policy for all mirrored logical volumes. Strict allocation forces mirrors to
occupy different disks. Without strict allocation, you can have multiple m irror copies on the same
disk; if that disk fails, you will lose all your copies. To control the allocation policy, use the –s
option with the lvcreate and lvchange commands. By default, strict allocation is enabled.
2. To improve the availability of your system, keep mirror copies of logical volumes on separate I/O
busses if possible. With multiple mirror copies on the same bus, the bus controller becomes a
single point of failure—if the controller fails, you lose access to all the disks on that bus, and thus
access to your data. If you create physical volume groups and set the allocation policy to PVG-
strict, LVM helps you avoid inadvertently creating multiple mirror copies on a single bus. For more
information about physical volume groups, see lvmpvg(4).
3. Consider using one or more free disks within each volume group as spares. If you configure a disk
as a spare, then a disk failure causes LVM to reconfigure the volume group so that the spare disk
takes place of the failed one. That is, all the logical volumes that were mirrored on the failed disk
are automatically mirrored and resynchronized on the spare, while the logical volume remains
available to users. You can then schedule the replacement of the failed disk at a time of minimal
inconvenience to you and your users. Sparing is particularly useful for maintaining data
redundancy when your disks are not hot-swappable, since the replacement process may have to
wait until your next scheduled maintenance interval. Disk sparing is discussed in Managing
Systems and Workgroups (11i v1 and v2) and System Administrator's Guide: Logical Volume
Management (11i v3).
Note: The sparing feature is one where you can use a spare physical volume to replace an existing
physical volume within a volume group when mirroring is in effect, in t he event the existing physical
volume fails. The sparing feature is available fo r version 1.0 volume groups (legacy volume group).
Version 2.x volume groups do not support sparing.
Creating Recovery Media
Ignite/UX lets you create a consistent, reliable recovery mechanism in the event of a catastrophic
failure of a system disk or root volume group. You can back up essential system data to a tape
device, CD, DVD, or a network repository, and quickly recover the system configuration. While
Ignite/UX is not intended to be used to back up all system data, you can u se it with other data
recovery applications to create a means of total system recovery.
Ignite/UX is a free add-on product, available from www.hp.com/go/softwaredepot. Documentation
is available from the Ignite/UX website.
Other Recommendations for Optimal System Recovery
Here are some other recommendations, summarized from the Managing Systems and Workgroups
and System Administrator's Guide: Logical Volume Management manuals that simplify recoveries
after catastrophic system failures:
• Keep the number of disks in the root volume group to a minimum (no more than three), even if the
root volume group is mirrored. The benefits of a small root volume group are threefold: First, fewer
disks in the root volume group means less opportunities for disk failure in that group. Second, more
6
disks in any volume group leads to a more complex LVM configuration, which will be more difficult
to recreate after a catastrophic failure. Finally, a small root volume group is quickly recovered. In
some cases, you can reinstall a minimal system, restore a backup, and be back online within three
hours of diagnosis and replacement of hardware.
Three disks in the root volume group are better than two due to quorum r estrictions. With a two-disk
root volume group, a loss of one disk can require you to override quor um to activate the volume
group; if you must reboot to replace the disk, you must interrupt the boot process and u se the –lq
boot option. If you have three disks in the volume group, and they are isolated from each other
such that a hardware failure only affects one of them, then failure of only one disk enables the
system to maintain quorum.
• Keep your other volume groups small, if possible. Many small volume grou ps are preferable to a
few large volume groups, for most of the same reasons mentioned previou sly. In addition, with a
very large volume group, the impact of a single disk failure can be widespread, especially if you
must deactivate the volume group. With a smaller volume group, the amount of data that is
unavailable during recovery is much smaller, and you will spend less time reloading from backup. If
you are moving disks between systems, it is easier to track, export, and import smaller volu me
groups. Several small volume groups often have better performance than a single large one. Finally,
if you ever have to recreate all the disk layouts, a smaller volume group is easier to map. Consider
organizing your volume groups so that the data in each volume group is dedicated to a particular
task. If a disk failu re makes a vo lume grou p unavailable, then only its associated task is affected
during the recovery process.
• Maintain adequ at e documentatio n of your I/O and LVM configuration, specifically the outputs from
the following commands:
Command Scope Purpose
ioscan –f Print I/O configuration
Print information on root, boot, swap, and dump fo r all volume lvlnboot -v logical volume s g roups
Print volume group configuration from backup file
fo r all volume vgcfgrestore –l
groups
fo r all logical Print volume group information, including status of
vgdisplay –v logical volumes and physical volumes volumes
Print logical volume inf ormation, including for all logical
lvdisplay –v mapping and status of logical extents volumes
for all physical Print physical volume information, including status pvdisplay –v
volumes of physical extents
Print I/O configuratio n listing the hardware path
ioscan –m lun to the disk, LUN insta nce, LUN hardware path
(11i v3 onwards) and lunpath hardware path to the disk
With this information in hand, you or your HP support representative may be able to reconstruct a
lost configuration, even if the LVM disks have corrupted headers. A hard copy is not required or
even necessarily practical, but accessibility during recovery is important and you should plan for
this.
• Make sure that your LVM configuration backups are up-to-date. Make an explicit configuration
backup using the vgcfgbackup command immediately after importing any volume group or
activating any shared volume group for the first time. Normally, LVM backs up a volume group
configuration whenever you run a command to change that configuration; if an LVM command
prints a warning that the vgcfgbackup command failed, be sure to investigate it.
7
While this list of preparatory actions does not keep a disk from failing, it makes it easier for you to
deal with failures when they occur.
8
2. Recognizing a Failing Disk
The guidelines in the previous section will not prevent disk failures on your system. Assuming you
follow all the recommendations, how can you tell when a disk has failed? This section explains how to
look for signs that one of y our disks is having problems, and how to determine which disk it is.
I/O Errors in the System Log
Often an error message in the system log file is your first indication of a disk problem. In
/var/adm/syslog/syslog.log , you might see the following error:
HP-UX versions prior to 11.31:
SCSI: Request Timeout -- lbolt: 329741615, dev: 1f022000
To m ap this error message to a specific disk, look under the /dev directory for a device file with a
device number that matches the printed value. More specifically, search for a file whose minor
number matches the lower six digits of the number following dev:. The device number in this
example is 1f022000; its lower six digits are 022000, so search for that value using the following
command:
# ll /dev/*dsk | grep 022000
brw-r----- 1 bin sys 31 0x022000 Sep 22 2002 c2t2d0
crw-r----- 1 bin sys 188 0x022000 Sep 25 2002 c2t2d0
HP-UX 11.31 and later:
Asynchronous write failed on LUN (dev=0x3000015)
IO details : blkno : 2345, sector no : 23
To map this error message to a specific disk, look under the /dev directory for a device file with a
device number that matches the printed value. More specifically, search for a file whose minor
number matches the lower six digits of the number following dev:. The device number in this
example is 3000015; its lower six digits are 000015, so search for that value using the following
command:
# ll /dev/*disk | grep 000015
brw-r----- 1 bin sys 3 0x000015 May 26 20:01 disk43
crw-r----- 1 bin sys 23 0x000015 Ma y 26 20:01 disk43
To confirm if the specific disk is under the LVM control, use the pvdisplay –l command. Even if the
disk is not accessible but has an entry in the LVM configur ation file (/etc/lvmtab), the pvdisplay
–l command output is LVM_Disk=yes or LVM_Disk=no based on whether disk belongs to LVM or
not, respectively.
# pvdisplay -l /dev/dsk/c2t2d0
/dev/dsk/c11t1d7:LVM_Disk=yes
This gives you a device file to use for further investigation. If it is found that the disk does not belong
to LVM, see the appropriate manual pages or documentation for information on how to proceed.
The pvdisplay command supporting the new –l option, which detects whether the disk is under the
LVM control or not, is delivered as part of the LVM command component in these releases:
• For HP-UX 11i v1, install patch PHCO_35313 or their superseding patches.
• For HP-UX 11i v2, install patch PHCO_34421 or their superseding patches.
Note: Starting with HP-UX 11i v3, the –l option to the pvdisplay command is available as part of
the base operating system.
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Disk Failure Notification Messages from Diagnostics
If you have Event Monitoring Service (EMS) hardware monitors installed on you r system, and you
enabled the disk monitor disk_em, a failing disk can trigger an event to the (EMS). Depending on
how you configured EMS, you might get an email message, information in
/var/adm/syslog/syslog.log, or messages in another log file. EMS error messages identify a
hardware problem, what caused it, and what m ust be done to correct it. The following example is
part of an error message:
Event Time..........: Tue Oct 26 14:06:00 2004
Severity............: CRITICAL
Monitor.............: disk_em
Event #.............: 18
System..............: myhost
Summary:
Disk at hardware path 0/2/1/0.2.0 : Drive is not responding.
Description of Error:
The hardware did not respond to the request by the driver. The I/O
request was not completed.
Probable Cause / Recommended Action:
The I/O request that the monitor made to this device failed because
the device timed-out. Check cables, power supply, ensure the drive
is powered ON, and if needed contact your HP support representative
to check the drive.
For more information on E MS, see the diagnostics section on the docs.hp.com website.
LVM Command Errors
Sometimes LVM commands, such as vgdisplay, return an error suggest ing that a disk has problems.
For example:
# vgdisplay –v | more
…
--- Physical volumes ---
PV Name /dev/dsk/c0t3d0
PV Status unavailable
Total PE 1023
Free PE 173
…
The physical volume status of unavailable indicates that LVM is having problems with the disk. You
can get the same status information from pvdisplay.
The next two examples are warnings from vgdisplay and vgchange indicating that LVM has no
contact with a disk:
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# vgdisplay -v vg
vgdisplay: Warning: couldn't query physical volume "/dev/dsk/c0t3d0": The
specified path does not correspond to physical volume attached to this
volume group vgdisplay: Warning: couldn't query all of the physical
volumes.
# vgchange -a y /dev/vg01
vgchange: Warning: Couldn't attach to the volume group physical volume
"/dev/dsk/c0t3d0": A component of the path of the physical volume does
not exist. Volume group "/dev/vg01" has been successfully changed.
Another sign that you might have a disk problem is seeing stale extents in the output from
lvdisplay. If you have stale extents on a logical volume even after running the vgsync or lvsync
commands, you might have an issue with an I/O path or one of the disks used by the logical volume,
but not necessarily the disk showing stale extents. For example:
# lvdisplay –v /dev/vg01/lvol3 | more
…
LV Status available/stale
…
--- Logical extents ---
LE PV1 PE1 Status 1 PV2 PE2 Status 2
0000 /dev/dsk/c0t3d0 0000 current /dev/dsk/c1t3d0 0100 current
0001 /dev/dsk/c0t3d0 0001 current /dev/dsk/c1t3d0 0101 current
0002 /dev/dsk/c0t3d0 0002 current /dev/dsk/c1t3d0 0102 stale
0003 /dev/dsk/c0t3d0 0003 current /dev/dsk/c1t3d0 0103 stale
…
All LVM error messages tell you which device file is associated with the problematic disk. This is useful
for the next step, confirming disk failure.
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3. Confirming Disk Failure
Once you suspect a disk has failed or is failing, make certain that the suspect disk is indeed failing.
Replacing or removing the incorrect disk makes the recovery process take longer. It can even cause
data loss. For example, in a mirrored configuration, if you were to replace the wrong disk—the one
holding the current good copy rather than the failing disk—the mirrored data on the good disk is lost.
It is also possible that the suspect disk is not failing. What seems to be a disk failure might be a
hardware path failure; that is, the I/O card or cable might have failed. If a disk has multiple
hardware paths, also known as pvlinks, one path can fail while an alternate path continues to work.
For such disks, try the following steps on all paths to the disk.
If you have isolated a suspect disk, you can use hardware diagnostic tools, like Su pport Tools
Manager, to get detailed information about it. Use these tools as your first approach to confirm disk
failure. They are documented on docs.hp.com in the diagnostics area. If you do not have diagnostic
tools available, follow these steps to confirm that a disk has failed or is failing:
1. Use the ioscan command to check the S/W state of the disk. Only disks in state CLAIMED are
currently accessible by the system. Disks in other states such as NO_HW or disks that are
completely missing from the ioscan output are suspicious. If the disk is marked as CLAIMED, its
controller is responding. For example:
# ioscan –fCdisk
Class I H/W Path Driver S/W State H/W Type Description
========================================================= ==========
disk 0 8/4.5.0 sdisk CLAIMED DEVICE SEAGATE ST34572WC
disk 1 8/4.8.0 sdisk UNCLAIMED UNKNOWN SEAGATE ST34572WC
disk 2 8/16/5.2.0 sdisk CLAIMED DEVICE TOS HIBA CD-ROM XM-5401TA
In this example, the disk at hardware path 8/4.8.0 is not accessible.
If the disk has multiple hardware paths, be sure to check all the paths.
4. You can use the pvdisplay command to check whether the disk is at tached or not. A physical
volume is considered to be attached, if the pvdisplay command is able to report a valid statu s
(unavailable/available) for it. Otherwise, the disk is unattached. In that case, the disk was
defective or inaccessible at the time the volume group was activated. For example, if
/dev/dsk/c0t5d0 is a path to a physical volume that is attached to LVM, enter:
# pvdisplay /dev/dsk/c0t5d0 | grep “PV Status”
PV Status available
If /dev/dsk/c1t2d3 is a path to a phy sical volume that is detached from LVM access using a
pvchange –a n or pvchange –a N command, enter:
# pvdisplay /dev/dsk/c1t2d3 | grep “PV Status”
PV Status unavailable
If the disk responds to the ioscan command, test it with the diskinfo command. The reported
size must be nonzero; otherwise, the device is not ready. For example:
# diskinfo /dev/rdsk/c0t5d0
SCSI describe of /dev/rdsk/c0t5d0:
vendor: SEAGATE
product id: ST34572WC
type: direct access
size: 0 Kbytes
bytes per sector: 512
In this example the size is 0, so the disk is malfunctioning.
12
5. If both ioscan and diskinfo succeed, the disk might still be failing. As a final test, try to read
from the disk using the dd command. Depending on the size of the disk, a comprehensive read
can be time-consuming, so you might want to read only a portion of the disk. If the disk is
functioning properly, no I/O errors are reported.
The following example shows a successful read of the first 64 megabytes of the disk: When you
enter the following command, look for the solid blinking green LED on the disk:
# dd if=/dev/rdsk/c0t5d0 of=/dev/null bs=1024k count=64 &
64+0 records in
64+0 records out
Note: The previous example recommends running the dd command in the background (by
adding & to the end of the command) because y ou do not know if the command will hang when it
does the read. If the dd command is run in the foreground, Ctrl+C stops the read on the disk.
The following command shows an unsuccessful read of the whole disk:
# dd if=/dev/rdsk/c1t3d0 of=/dev/null bs=1024k &
dd read error: I/O error
0+0 records in 0+0 records out
Note: The previous example recommends running the dd command in background (by adding &
at the end of the command) because you do not know if the command will hang when it does the
read. If the dd command is run in the foreground, Ctrl+C stops the read on the disk.
6. If the physical volume is attached but cannot be refreshed via an lvsync, it is likely there is a
media problem at a specific location. Reading only the extents associated with the LE can help
isolate the problem. Remember the stale ext ent might not have the problem.
The lvsync command starts refreshing extents at LE zero and stops if it encounters an error.
Therefore, find the first LE in any logical volume that is stale and test this one. For example:
1. Find the first stale LE:
# lvdisplay –v /dev/vg01/lvol3 | more
.LV Status available/ stale
.
.
.
--- Logical extents ---
LE PV1 PE1 Status 1 PV2 PE2 Status 2
0000 /dev/dsk/c0t3 d0 0000 current /dev/dsk/c1t3d0 0100 current
0001 /dev/dsk /c0t3d0 0001 current /dev/dsk/c1t3d0 0101 current
0002 /dev/dsk/c0t3d0 0002 current /dev/dsk/c1t3d0 0102 stale
0003 /dev/dsk/c0t3d0 0003 cur rent /dev/dsk/c1t3d0 0103 stale
In this case, LE number 2 is stale.
2. Get the extent size for the VG:
# vgdisplay /dev/vg01 | grep –I “PE Size”
PE size (Mbytes) 32
3. Find the start of PE zero on each disk:
For a version 1.0 VG, enter:
xd -j 0x2048 -t uI -N 4 /dev/dsk/c0t3d0
13
For a version 2.x VG, enter:
xd -j 0x21a4 -t uI -N 4 /dev/dsk/c0t3d0
In this example, this is a version 1.0 VG.
# xd -j 0x2048 -t uI -N 4 /dev/dsk/c0t3d0
0000000 1024
0000004
# xd -j 0x2048 -t uI -N 4 /dev/dsk/c1t3d0
0000000 1024
0000004
4. Calculate th e location of the physical extent for each PV. Multiply the PE number by the PE size
and then by 1024 to convert to Kb:
2 * 32 * 1024 = 65536
Add the offset to PE zero:
65536 + 1024 = 66560
5. Enter the following dd commands:
# dd bs=1k skip=66560 count=32768 if=/dev/rdsk/c0t3d 0 of=/dev/null &
# dd bs=1k skip=66560 count=32768 if=/dev/rdsk/c1t3d0 of=/dev/null &
Note the value calculated is used in the skip argument. The count is obtained by multiplying
the PE size by 1024.
Note : The previous example recommends running the dd command in the background (by
adding & at the end of the command) because you do not know if the dd command will hang
when it does the read. If the dd command is run in the foreground, Ctrl+C stops the read on the
disk.
14
4. Gathering Information About a Failing Disk
Once you know which disk is failing, you can decide how to deal with it. You can choose to remove
the disk if your system does not need it, or you can choose to replace it. Before deciding on your
course of action, you must gather some information to help guide you through the recovery process.
Is the questionable disk hot-swappable?
This determines whether you must power down your system to replace the disk. If you do not want to
power down your system and the failing disk is not hot-swappable, the best you can do is disable
LVM access to the disk.
Is it the root disk or part of the root volume group?
If the root disk is failing, the replacement process has a few extra steps to se t up the boot area; in
addition, you might have to boot from the mirror of the root disk if the prim ary root disk has failed. If
a failing root disk is not mirrored, you must reinstall to the replacement disk, or recover it from an
Ignite-UX backup.
To determine whether the disk is in the root volume gr oup, enter the lvlnboot command with the –v
option. It lists the disks in the root volum e group, and any special volumes configured on them. For
example:
# lvlnboot –v
Boot Definitions for Volume Group /dev/vg00:
Physical Volumes belonging in Root Volume Group:
/dev/dsk/c0t5d0 (0/0/0/3/0.5.0) -- Boot Disk
Boot: lvol1 on: /dev/dsk/c0t5d0
Root: lvol3 on: /dev/dsk/c0t5d0
Swap: lvol2 on: /dev/dsk/c0t5d0
Dump: lvol2 on: /dev/dsk/c0t5d0, 0
What is the hardware path to the disk, LUN instance, LUN hard ware path, and LUN
hardware path to the disk?
For the HP-UX 11i v3 release (11.31) and later , when LVM is configured with persistent device files,
run the ioscan command and note the hardware paths of the failed disk. For example:
# ioscan -m lun /dev/disk/disk62
Class I Lun H/W Path Driver S/W State H/W Type Health
Description
======================================================================
disk 62 64000/0xfa00/0x2e esdisk CLAIMED DEVICE online
HP 73.4GST373405FC
0/3/1/0/4/0.0x22000004cf247cb7.0x0
0/3/1/0/4/1.0x2100 0004cf247cb7.0x0
/dev/disk /disk62 /dev/rdisk/disk62
What recovery strategy do you have for the logical volumes on this disk?
Part of the disk removal or replacement process is based on what recovery strategy you have for the
data on that disk. You can have different strategies (mirroring, restoring from backup, reinitializing
from scratch) for each logical volume.
You can find the list of logical volumes using the disk with the pvdisplay command. For example:
# pvdisplay -v /dev/dsk/c0t5d0 | more
…
--- Distribution of physical volume ---
LV Name LE of LV PE for LV
/dev/vg00/lvol1 75 75
15
/dev/vg00/lvol2 512 512
/dev/vg00/lvol3 50 50
/dev/vg00/lvol4 50 50
/dev/vg00/lvol5 250 250
/dev/vg00/lvol6 450 450
/dev/vg00/lvol7 350 350
/dev/vg00/lvol8 1000 1000
/dev/vg00/lvol9 1000 1000
/dev/vg00/lvol10 3 3
…
If pvdisplay fails, you have several options. You can refer to any configuration documentation you
created in advance. Alternately, you can run lvdisplay –v on all the logical volumes in the volume
group and see if any extents are mapped to an unavailable physical volume. T he lvdisplay
command shows ’???’ for the physical volu me if it is unavailable.
The problem with this approach is that it is not precise if more than one disk is unavailable; to ensure
that multiple simultaneous disk failures have not occurred, run vgdisplay to see if the active and
current number of physical volumes differs by exactly one.
A third option for determining which logical volumes are on the disk is to use the vgcfgdisplay
command. This command is available from your HP support representative.
If you have mirrored any logical volume onto a separate disk, confirm that the mirror copies are
current. For each of the logical volumes affected, use lvdisplay to determine if the number of
mirror copies is greater than zero. This verifies that the logical volume is mirrored. Then use
lvdisplay again to determine which logical extents are mapped onto the suspect disk, and whether
there is a current copy of that data on another disk. For example:
# lvdisplay -v /dev/vg00/lvol1
--- Logical volumes ---
LV Name /dev/vg00/lvol1
VG Name /dev/vg00
LV Permission read/write
LV Status available/syncd
Mirror copies 1
Consistency Recovery MWC
Schedule parallel
LV Size (Mbytes) 300
Current LE 75
Allocated PE 150
Stripes 0
Stripe Size (Kbytes) 0
Bad block off
Allocation strict/contiguous
IO Timeout (Seconds) default
# lvdisplay -v /dev/vg00/lvol1 | grep –e /dev/dsk/c0t5d0 –e ’???’
00000 /dev/dsk/c0t5d0 00000 current /dev/dsk/c2t6d0 00000 current
00001 /dev/dsk/c0t5d0 00001 current /dev/dsk/c2t6d0 00001 current
00002 /dev/dsk/c0t5d0 00002 current /dev/dsk/c2t6d0 00002 current
00003 /dev/dsk/c0t5d0 00003 current /dev/dsk/c2t6d0 00003 current
00004 /dev/dsk/c0t5d0 00004 current /dev/dsk/c2t6d0 00004 current
00005 /dev/dsk/c0t5d0 00005 current /dev/dsk/c2t6d0 00005 current
…
The first lvdisplay command output shows that lvol1 is mirrored. In the second lvdisplay
command output, you can see that all extents of the failing disk (in this case, /dev/dsk/c0t5d0)
have a current copy elsewhere on the system, specifically on /dev/dsk/c2t6d0. If the disk
/dev/dsk/c0t5d0 is unavailable when the volume group is activated, its column contains a ‘???’
instead of the disk name.
16
There might be an instance where you see that only the failed physical volu me holds the current copy
of a given extent (and all other mirror copies of the logical volume hold the stale data for that given
extent), and LVM does not permit you to remove that physical volume from the volume group. In this
case, use the lvunstale command (available from your HP support representative) to mark one of
the mirror copies as “nonstale” for that given extent. HP recommends you use the lvunstale tool
with caution.
With this information in hand, you can now decide how best to resolve the disk failure.
17
5. Removing the Disk
If you have a copy of the data on the failing disk, or you can move the data to another disk, you can
choose to remove the disk from the system instead of replacing it.
Removing a Mirror Copy from a Disk
If you have a mirror copy of the data already, you can stop LVM from usin g the copy on the failing
disk by reducing the number of mirrors. To remove the mirror copy from a specific disk, use
lvreduce, and specify the disk from which to remove the mirror copy. For example:
# lvreduce -m 0 -A n /dev/vgname/lvname pvname (if you have a single mirror copy)
or:
# lvreduce -m 1 -A n /dev/vgname/lvname pvname (if you ha ve two mirror copies)
The –A n option is used to prevent the lvreduce command from performing an automatic
vgcfgbackup operation, which might hang while accessing a defective disk.
If you have only a single mirror copy and want to maintain redundancy, cre ate a second mirror of the
data on a different, functional disk, subject to the mirroring guidelines, desc ribed in Preparing for Disk
Recovery, before you run lvreduce.
You might encounter a situation where you have to remove from the volume group a failed physical
volume or a physical volume that is not actually connected to the system but is still recorded in the
LVM configuration file. Such a physical volume is sometimes called a ghost disk or phantom disk. You
can get a gho st disk if the disk has failed before volume group activation, possibly because the
system was rebooted after the failure.
A ghost disk is u sually indicated by vgdisplay reporting more current physical volumes than active
ones. Additionally, LVM commands might complain about the missing physical volumes as follows:
# vgdisplay vg01
vgdisplay: Warning: couldn't query physical volume "/dev/dsk/c5t5d5":
The specifi ed path does not correspond to p hysical volume attached to
this volume group
vgdisplay: Couldn't query the list of physical volumes.
--- Volume groups ---
VG Name /dev/vg01
VG Write Access read/write
VG Status available
Max LV 255
Cur LV 3
Open LV 3
Max PV 16
Cur PV 2 (#No. of PVs belonging to vg01)
Act PV 1 (#No. of PVs recorded in the kernel)
Max PE per PV 4350
VGDA 2
PE Size (Mbytes) 8
Total PE 4341
Alloc PE 4340
Free PE 1
Total PVG 0
Total Spare PVs 0
Total Spare PVs in use 0
18
In these situations where the disk was not available at boot time, or the di sk has failed before volume
group activation (pvdisplay failed), the lvreduce command fails with an error that it could not
query the physical volu me. You can still remove the mirror copy, but you must specify the physical
volume key rather than the name.
The physical volume key of a disk indicates its order in the volume group. Th e first physical volume
has the key 0, the second has the key 1, and so on. This need not be the o rder of appearance in
/etc/lvmtab file although it is usually like that, at least when a volume group is initially created.
You can use the physical volume key to address a physical volume that is not atta ched to the volume
group. This usually happens if it was not accessible during activation, for example, because of a
hardware or configuration problem. You can obtain the key using lvdisplay with the –k option as
follows:
# lvdisplay -v –k /dev/vg00/lvol1
…
--- Logical extents ---
LE PV1 PE1 Status 1 PV2 PE2 Status 2
00000 0 00000 stale 1 00000 current
00001 0 00001 stale 1 00001 current
00002 0 00002 stale 1 00002 current
00003 0 00003 stale 1 00003 current
00004 0 00004 stale 1 00004 current
00005 0 00005 stale 1 00005 current
…
Compare this output with the output of lvdisplay without –k, which you used to check the mirror
status. The column that contained the failing disk (or ’???’) now holds the key. For this example, the
key is 0. Use this key with lvreduce as fol lows:
# lvreduce -m 0 -A n –k /dev/vgname/lvname key (if you have a single mirror copy)
or:
# lvreduce -m 1 -A n –k /dev/vgname/lvname key (if you h ave two mirror copies)
Moving the Physical Extents to Anothe r Disk
If the disk is marginal and you can still read from it, you can move the data onto another disk by
moving the physical extents onto another disk .
The pvmove command moves logical volumes or certain extents of a log ical volume from one
physical volume to another. It is typic ally used to free up a disk; that is, to move all data from that
physical volume so it can be removed from the volume group. In its simplest invocation, you specify
the disk to free up, and LVM moves a ll the physical extents on that disk to any other disks in the
volume group, subject to any mirroring allocation policies. For example:
# pvmove pvname
The pvmove command will fail if the logical volume is striped.
Note: In the September 2008 release of HP-UX 11i v3, the pvmove command is enhanced with
several new features, including support for:
• Moving a range of physical extents
• Moving extents from the end of a physical volume
• Moving extents to a specific location on the destination physical volume
• Moving the physical extents from striped logical volumes and striped mirrored logical volumes
• A new option, –p, to preview physical extent movement details without performing the move
19
You can select a particular target disk or disks, if desired. For example, to move all the physical
extents from c0t5d0 to the physical volume c0t2d0, enter the following command:
# pvmove /dev/dsk/c0t5d0 /dev/dsk/c0t2d0
The pvmove command succeeds only if there is enough space on the destination physical volumes to
hold all the allocated extents of the source physical volume. Before you move the extents with the
pvmove command, check the “Total PE” field in the pvdisplay source_pv_path command
output, and the “Free PE” field output in the pvdisplay dest_pv_path c ommand output.
You can choose to move only the extents belonging to a particular logical volume. Use this option if
only certain sectors on the disk are readable, or if you want to move only unmirrored logical volumes.
For example, to move all physical extents of lvol4 that are located o n physical volume c0t5d0 to
c1t2d0, enter the following command:
# pvmove -n /dev/vg01/lvol4 /dev/dsk/c0t5d0 /dev/dsk/c1t2d0
Note that pvmove is not an atomic operation, and moves data extent by extent. If pvmove is
abnormally terminated by a system crash or kill -9, the volume group can be left in an inconsistent
configuration showing an additional pseudo mirro r copy for the extents being moved. You can
remove the extra mirror copy using the lvreduce command with the –m option on each of the
affected logical volumes; there is no need to specify a disk.
Removing the Disk from the Volume Gr oup
After the disk no longer holds any physical extents, you can us e the vgreduce command to remove
the physical volume from the volume g roup so it is not inadvertently used again. Check for alternate
links before removing the disk, since you must remove all the paths to a multipathed disk. Use the
pvdisplay command as follows:
# pvdisplay /dev/dsk/c0t5d0 --- Physical volumes ---
PV Name /dev/dsk/c0t5d0
PV Name /dev/dsk/c1t6d0 Alternate Link
VG Name /dev/vg01
PV Status available
Allocatable yes
VGDA 2
Cur LV 0
PE Size (Mbytes) 4
Total PE 1023
Free PE 1023
Allocated PE 0
Stale PE 0
IO Timeout (Seconds) default
Autoswitch On
In this example, there are two entries for PV Name. Use the vgreduce command to reduce each
path as follows:
# vgreduce vgname /dev/dsk/c0t5d0
# vgreduce vgname /dev/dsk/c1t6d0
If the disk is unavailable, the vgreduce command fails. You can still forcibly reduce it, but you must
then rebuild the lvmtab, which has two side effects. First, any deactivated volume groups are left out
of the lvmtab, so you must manually vgimport them later. Second, if any multipathed disks have
their link order reset, and if you arranged your pvlinks to implement load-balancing, you might have
to arrange them again.
Starting with the HP-UX 11i v3 release, there is a new feature introduced in the mass storage
subsystem that also supports multiple paths to a device and allows access to the multiple paths
simultaneously. If the new multi-path behavior is enabled on the system, and the imported volume
20
groups were configured with only persistent device special files, there is no need to arrange them
again.
On releases prior to HP-UX 11i v3, you must rebuild the lvmtab file as follows:
# vgreduce -f vgname <pvname>
# mv /etc/lvmtab /etc/lvmtab.save
# vgscan –v
Note : Starting with 11i v3, use the following steps to rebuild the LVM configuration files
(/etc/lvmtab or /etc/lvmtab_p):
#vgreduce –f vgname <pvname>
#vgscan –f vgname
In cases where the physical volume is not readable (for example, when the physical volume is
unattached either because the disk failed before volume group activation or because the system has
been rebooted after the disk failure), running the vgreduce command with the -f option on those
physical volumes removes them from the volume group, provided no logical volumes have extents
mapped on that disk. Otherwise, if the unattached physical volume is not free,- vgreduce -f reports
an extent map to identify the associated logical volumes. You must free all physical extents using
lvreduce or lvremove before you can remove the physical volume with the vgreduce command.
This completes the procedure for removing the disk from your LVM configuration. If the disk hardware
allows it, you can remove it physically from the system. Otherwise, physically remove it at the next
scheduled system reboot.
21
7. 6. Replacing the Disk (Releases Prior to 11i v3 or When LVM Volume Group is Configured with
Only Legacy DSFs on 11i v3 or Later)
If you decide to replace the disk, you must perform a five-step procedure. How you perform each step
depends on the information you gathered earlier (hot-swap information, logical volume names, and
recovery strategy), so this procedure varies.
This section also includes several common scenarios for disk replacement, and a flowchart
summarizing the disk replacement procedure. Restore any lost data onto the disk.
The five steps are:
1. Temporarily halt LVM attempts to access the disk.
2. Physically replace the faulty disk.
3. Configure LVM information on the disk.
4. Re-enable LVM access to the disk.
5. Restore any lost data onto t he disk.
In the following steps, pvname is the character device special file for the physical volume. This name
might be /dev/rdsk/c2t15d0 or /dev/rdsk/c2t1d0s2.
Step1: Halting LVM Access to the Disk
This is known as detaching the disk. The actions you take to detach the disk depend on whether the
data is mirrored, if the LVM Online Disk Replacement functionality is available, and what applications
are using the disk. In some cases (for example, if an unmirrored file system c annot be unmounted),
you must shut down the system. The following list describes how to halt LVM access to the disk:
• If the disk is not hot-swappable, you must power down the sy stem to replace it. By shutting down
the system, you halt LVM access to the disk, so you can skip this step.
• If the disk contains any unmirrored logical volumes or any mirrored logical volumes without an
available and current mirror copy, halt any applications and unmount an y file systems using these
logical volumes. This prevents the applications or file systems from writing inconsistent data over the
newly restored replacement disk. For each logical volume on the disk:
o If the logical volume is mounted as a file system, try to unmount the file system.
# umount /dev/vgname/lvname
Attempting to unmount a file system that has open files (or that contains a user’s current
working directory) causes the command to fail with a Device busy message. You can use
the following procedure to determine what users and applications are causing the unmount
operation to fail:
1. Use the fuser command to find out what applications are using the file system as follows:
# fuser -u /dev/vgname/lvname
This command displays process IDs and users with open files mounted on that logical
volume, and whether it is a user’s working directory.
2. Use the ps command to map the list of process IDs to processes, and then determine
whether you can halt those processes.
3. To kill processes using the logical volume, enter the following command:
22
# fuser –ku /dev/vgname/lvname
4. Then try to unmount the file system again as follows:
# umount /dev/vgname/lvname
o If the logical volume is being accessed as a raw device, you can use fuser to find out which
applications are using it. Then you can halt those applications.
If for some reason you cannot disable access to the logical volume—for example, you cannot
halt an application or you cannot unmount the file system—you must shut down the system.
• If you have LVM online replacement (OLR) functionality available, detach the device u sing the –a
option of the pvchange command:
# pvchange -a N pvname
If pvchange fails with a message that the –a option is not recognized, the LVM OLR feature is not
installed.
Note: Starting with HP-UX 11i v3, the LVM OLR feature is available as part of the base operating
system. Because of the mass storage stack native multipath functionality o n the HP-UX 11i v3
release, disabling specific paths to a device using the pvchange -a n command may not stop
I/Os to th at path as they did in earlier releases. Detaching an entire physical volume using
pvchange –a N is still available in order to perform an Online Disk R eplacement. Use the
scsimgr command to disable physical volume paths using the disable option.
• If you do not h ave LVM OLR functionality, LVM continues to try to access the disk as long as it is in
the volume group and has always been available. You can make LVM sto p accessing the disk in
the following ways:
– – Remove the disk from the volume group. This means reducing any logical volumes that have
mirror copies on the faulty disk so that they no longer mirror onto that disk , and reducing the disk
from the disk group, as described in Removing the Disk. This maximizes access to the rest of the
volume group, but requires more LVM commands to modify the configu ration and then recreate it
on a replacement disk.
– Deactivate the volume group. You do not have to remove and recreate any mirrors, but all data
in the volume group is inaccessible during the replacement procedure.
– Shut down the system. This halts LVM access to the disk, but makes the entire system
inaccessible. Use this option only if you do not want to remove the disk from the volume group,
and you cannot deactivate it.
The following recommendations are intended to maximize system uptime and access to the volume
group, but you can use a stronger approach if your data and system availability requirements allow.
• If pvdisplay shows PV status as available, halt LVM access to the disk by removing it from the
volume group.
• If pvdisplay shows PV status as unavailable, or if pvdisplay fails to print the status, use
ioscan to determine if the disk can be accessed at all. If ioscan reports the disk status as NO_HW
on all its hardware paths, you can remove the disk. If ioscan shows any other status, halt LVM
access to the disk by deactivating the volume group.
Note: Starting with the HP-UX 11i v3 release, if the affected volume group is configured with
persistent device special files, use the ioscan –N command, which displays output using the agile
view instead of the legacy view.
Step 2: Replacing the Faulty Disk
23
If the disk is hot-swappable, you can replace it without powering down the system. Otherwise, power
down the system before replacing the disk. Fo r the hardware details on how to replace the disk, see
the hardware administrator’s guide for the system or disk array.
If you powered down the system, reboot it normally. The only exception is if you replaced a disk in
the root volume group.
• If you replaced the disk that you normally boot from, the replacement disk does not contain the
information needed by the boot loader. If your root disk is mirrored, b oot from it by using the
alternate boot path. If the root disk was not mirrored, you must reinstall or recover your system.
• If there are only two disks in the root volume group, the system might fail its quorum check and
might panic early in the boot process with the “panic: LVM: Configuration failure”
message. In this situation, you must override quorum to successfully boot. To do this, interrupt the
boot process and add the –lq option to the boot command normally used by the system. The boot
process and options are discussed in Chapter 5 of Managing Systems and Workgroups (11i v1
and v2) and System Administr ator's Guide: Logical Volume Management (11i v3).
Step 3: Initializing the Disk for LVM
This step copies LVM configuration information onto the disk , and marks it as owned by LVM so it can
subsequently be attached to the volume group.
If you replaced a mirror of the root disk on an Integrity server, run the idisk command as described
in step 1 of Appendix D: Mirroring the Root Volume on Integrity Servers. F or PA-RISC servers or non-
root disks, this step is unnecessary.
For any replaced disk, restore LVM configuration information to the disk using the vgcfgrestore
command as follows:
# vgcfgrestore –n vgname pvname
If you cannot use the vgcfgrestore command to write the original LVM header back to the new
disk because a valid LVM configuration backup file (/etc/lvmconf/vgXX.conf[.old]) is
missing or corrupted, you must remo ve the physical volume that is being restored from the volume
group (by using the vgreduce command) to get a clean configuration.
Note: In these situations the vgcfgrestore command might fail to restore the LVM header, issuing
a ‘Mismatch between the backup file and the running kernel’ message. If you are
sure that your back up is valid, you can override this check by using the –R option. To remove a
physical volume from a volume group, you must first free it by removing all of the logical extents. If
the logical volumes on such a disk are not mirrored, the data is lost anyway. If it is mirrored, you must
reduce the mirror before removing the physical volume.
Step 4: Re-enabling LVM Access to the Disk
The process in this step is known as attaching the disk. The action you take here depends on whether
LVM OLR is available.
If you have LVM OLR on your system, attach the device by entering the pvchange command with the
–a and y options as follows:
# pvchange -a y pvname
After LVM processes the pvchange command, it resumes using the device if possible.
If you do not have LVM OLR on your system, or you want to ensure that any alternate links are
attached, enter the vgchange command with the -a and y options to activate the volume group and
bring any detached devices online:
# vgchange -a y vgname
24
The vgchange command attaches all paths for all disks in the volume grou p, and automatically
resumes recovering any unattached failed disks in the volume group. Therefore, only run vgchange
after all work has been completed on all disks and paths in the volume group, and it is desirable to
attach them all.
Step 5: Restoring Lost Data to the Disk
This final step can be a straightforward resynchronization for mirrored configurations, or a recovery
of data from backup media.
• If a mirror of the root disk was replaced, initialize its boot information as follows:
– For a n Integrity server, follow steps 5, 6, and 8 in Appendix D: Mirroring the Root Volume on
Integrity Servers.
– For a PA-RISC server, follow steps 4, 5, and 7 in Appendix D: Mirroring the Root Volume on PA-
RISC Servers.
• If all the data on the replaced disk was mirrored, you do not have to do anything; LVM
automatically synchronizes the data on the disk with the other mirror c opies of the data.
• If the disk contained any unmirrored logical volumes (or mirrored logical volumes that did not have
a current copy on the system), restore the data from backup, mount the file systems, and restart any
applications you halted in step 1.
Replacing a LVM Disk in an HP Serviceguard Cluster Volume Group
Replacing LVM disks in an HP Serviceguard cluster follows the same procedure described in steps 1-
5, unless the volume group is shared. If the volume group is shared, make the following changes:
• When disabling LVM access to the disk, perform any online disk replacement steps individually on
each cluster node sharing the volume group. If you do not have LVM OLR, and you detach the disk,
you might need to make configuration changes that require you to deactivate the volume group on
all cluster nodes. Howev er, if you have Shared LVM Single Node Online Volume Reconfiguration
(SNOR) installed, you can leave the volume grou p activated on one of the cluster nodes.
• When re-enabling LVM access, activate the physical volume on each cluster node sharing the
volume group.
Special care is required when performing a Serviceguard rolling upgrade. For details, see the LVM
Online Disk Replacement (LVM OLR) white paper.
Disk Replacement Scenarios
The following scenarios show several LVM disk replacement examples.
Scenario 1: Best Case
For this example, you have followed all the guidelines in Section 1: Preparing for Disk Recovery: all
disks are hot-swappable, all logical volumes are mirrored, and LVM OLR functionality is available on
the system. In this case, you can detach the disk using the pvchange command, replace it, reattach
it, and let LVM mirroring synchronize the logical volumes, all while the system remains up.
For this example, you assume that the bad disk is at hardware path 2/0/7.15.0 and has device
special files named /dev/rdsk/c2t15d0 and /dev/dsk/c2t15d0.
Check that the disk is not in the root volume group, and that all logical volumes on the bad disk are
mirrored with a current copy available. Enter the following commands:
# lvlnboot –v
Boot Definitions for Volume Group /dev/vg00:
Physical Volumes belonging in Root Volume Group:
/dev/dsk/c0t5d0 (0/0/0/3/0.5.0) -- Boot Disk
Boot: lvol1 on: /dev/dsk/c0t5d0
Root: lvol3 on: /dev/dsk/c0t5d0
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Swap: lvol2 on: /dev/dsk/c0t5d0
Dump: lvol2 on: /dev/dsk/c0t5d0, 0
# pvdisplay –v /dev/dsk/c2t15d0 | more
…
--- Distribution of physical volume ---
LV Name LE of LV PE for LV
/dev/vg01/lvol1 4340 4340
…
# lvdisplay –v /dev/vg01/lvol1 | grep “Mirror copies”
Mirror copies 1
# lvdisplay -v /dev/vg01/lvol1 | grep –e /dev/dsk/c2t15d0 –e ’???’ | more
00000 /dev/dsk/c2t15d0 00000 current /dev/dsk/c5t15d0 00000 current
00001 /dev/dsk/c2t15d0 00001 current /dev/dsk/c5t15d0 00001 current
00002 /dev/dsk/c2t15d0 00002 current /dev/dsk/c5t15d0 00002 current
00003 /dev/dsk/c2t15d0 00003 current /dev/dsk/c5t15d0 00003 current
…
The lvlnboot command confir ms that the disk is not in the root volume group. The pvdisplay
command shows which logical volumes are on the disk. The lvdisplay command shows that all
data in the logical volume has a current mirror copy on another disk. Enter the following commands to
continue with the disk replacement:
# pvchange -a N /dev/dsk/c2t15d0
# <replace the hot-swappable disk>
# vgcfgrestore –n vg01 /dev/rdsk/c2t15d0
# vgchange –a y vg01
Scenario 2: No Mirroring and No LVM Online Replacement
In this example, the disk is still hot-swappable, but there are u nmirrored logical volumes and the LVM
OLR functionality is enabled on the syste m or not. Disabling LVM access to the logical volumes is more
complicated, since you must find out what processes are using them.
The bad disk is represented by device spec ial file /dev/dsk/c2t2d0. Enter the following
commands:
# lvlnboot –v
Boot Definitions for Volume Group /dev/vg00:
Physical Volumes belonging in Root Volume Group:
/dev/dsk/c0t5d0 (0/0/0/3/0.5.0) -- Boot Disk
Boot: lvol1 on: /dev/dsk/c0t5d0
Root: lvol3 on: /dev/dsk/c0t5d0
Swap: lvol2 on: /dev/dsk/c0t5d0
Dump: lvol2 on: /dev/dsk/c0t5d0, 0
# pvdisplay –v /dev/dsk/c2t2d0 | more
…
--- Distribution of physical volume ---
LV Name LE of LV PE for LV
/dev/vg01/lvol1 4340 4340
…
# lvdisplay –v /dev/vg01/lvol1 | grep “Mirror copies”
Mirror copies 0
This confirms that the logical volume is not mirrored, and it is not in the root volume group. As system
administrator, you know that the logical volume is a mounted file system. To disable access to the
logical volume, try to unmount it. Use the fuser command to isolate and terminate processes using
the file system, if necessary. Enter the following commands:
26
# umount /dev/vg01/lvol1
umount: cannot unmount /dump : Device busy
# fuser -u /dev/vg01/lvol1
/dev/vg01/lvol1: 27815c(root) 27184c(root)
# ps -fp27815 -p27184
UID PID PPID C STIME TTY TIME COMMAND
root 27815 27184 0 09:04:05 pts/0 0:00 vi test.c
root 27184 27182 0 08:26:24 pts/0 0:00 -sh
# fuser -ku /dev/vg01/lvol1
/dev/vg01/lvol1: 27815c(root) 27184c(root)
# umount /dev/vg01/lvol1
For this example, it is assumed that you are permitted to halt access to the entire volume group while
you recover the disk. Use vgchange to deactivate the volume group and stop LVM from accessing
the disk:
# vgchange –a n vg01
Proceed with the disk replacement and recover data from backup:
# <replace the hot-swappable disk>
# vgcfgrestore –n vg01 /dev/rdsk/c2t2d0
# vgchange –a y vg01
# newfs [options] /dev/vg01/rlvol1
# mount /dev/vg01/lvol1 /dump
# <restore the file system from backup>
Scenario 3: No Hot-Swappable Disk
In this example, the disk is not hot-swappable, so you must reboot the system to replace it. Once
again, the bad disk is represented by device special file /dev/dsk/c2t2d0. Enter the following
commands:
# lvlnboot –v
Boot Definitions for Volume Group /dev/vg00:
Physical Volumes belonging in Root Volume Group:
/dev/dsk/c0t5d0 (0/0/0/3/0.5.0) -- Boot Disk
Boot: lvol1 on: /dev/dsk/c0t5d0
Root: lvol3 on: /dev/dsk/c0t5d0
Swap: lvol2 on: /dev/dsk/c0t5d0
Dump: lvol2 on: /dev/dsk/c0t5d0, 0
# pvdisplay –v /dev/dsk/c2t2d0 | more
…
--- Distribution of physical volume ---
LV Name LE of LV PE for LV
/dev/vg01/lvol1 4340 4340
…
# lvdisplay –v /dev/vg01/lvol1 | grep “Mirror copies”
Mirror copies 0
This confirms that the logical volume is not mirrored, and it is not in the root volume group. Shutting
down the system disables access to the disk, so you do not need to determine who is using the logical
volume.
# shutdown –h
# <replace the disk>
# <reboot normally>
# vgcfgrestore –n vg01 /dev/rdsk/c2t2d0
# vgchange –a y vg01
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# newfs [options] /dev/vg01/rlvol1
# mount /dev/vg01/lvol1 /app
# <restore the file system from backup>
Disk Replacement Process Flowcha rt
The following flowchart summarizes the disk replacement process.
28
29
Check
Root Disk
No
Root Disk?
Boot normally
If the disk is not hot-swappable one
BCH>boot pri Yes
ISL>hpux -lq
Ignite/UX Recovery
No
Is Primary root
Recover from a
mirrored?
Recovery tape or Ignite
Server
Mirrored ? Yes
No Boot from Mirror
BCH>boot alt end
Restore Header and ISL>hpux -lq
Attach PV
#vgcfgrestore -n vg PV
#vgchange -a y VG Yes Partition boot disk
(Integrity Servers)
LIF/BDRA
Config Procedure
Recover data from backup
Eg..
#newfs -F vxfs /dev/vgtest/rlvol1
#mount /dev/vgtest/lvol1 /mnt
Restore Header and
Restore data eg using frecover from tape: Attach PV
#frecover -v -f /dev/rmt/lm -I /mnt #vgcfgrestore -n vg PV
#vgchange -a y VG
Restart the application
Synchronize Mirrors
#vgsync vgtest
end
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8. 7. Replacing the Disk (11i v3 release Onwards when the LVM Volume Group is Configured with
Persistent DSFs)
After you isolate a failed disk, the replacement process depends on answers to the following
questions:
• Is the disk hot-swappable?
• Is the disk the root disk or part of the root volume group?
• What logical volumes are on the disk, and are they mirrored?
Based on the gathered information, choose the appropriate procedure.
Replacing a Mirrored Nonboot Disk
Use this procedure if all the physical extents on the disk have copies on another disk, and the disk is
not a boot disk. If the disk contains any unmirrored logical volumes or any mirrored logical volumes
without an available and cu rrent mirror copy, see Replacing an Unmirrored Nonboot Disk .
For this example, the disk to be replaced is at LUN hardware path 0/1/1/1.0x3.0x0, with device
special files named /dev/disk/disk14 and /dev/rdisk/disk14. Follow these steps:
1. Save the hardware paths to the disk.
Run the ioscan c ommand and note the hardware paths of the failed disk.
# ioscan –m lun /dev/disk/disk14
Class I Lun H/W Path Driver S/W State H/W Type Health Description
================================================================ ========
disk 14 64000/0xfa00/0x0 esdisk CLAIMED DEVICE offline HP MSA Vol
0/1/1/1.0x3.0x0
/dev/disk/disk14 /dev/rdisk/disk14
In this example, the LUN instance number is 14, the lunpath hardware path is
64000/0xfa00/0x0, and the lunpath hardware path is 0/1/1/1.0x3.0x0.
When the failed disk is replaced, a new LUN instance and LUN har dware path are created. To
identify the disk after it is replac ed, you must use the lunpath hardware path
(0/1/1/1.0x3.0x0).
2. Halt LVM access to the disk.
If the disk is not hot-swappable, power off the system to replace it. By shutting down the system,
you halt LVM access to the disk, so yo u can skip this step.
If the disk is hot-swappable, detach it using the –a option of the pvchange command:
# pvchange -a N /dev/disk/disk14
3. Replace the disk.
For the hardware details on how to replace the disk, see the hardware administrator's guide for
the system or disk array.
If the disk is hot-swappable, replace it. If the disk is not hot-swappable, shut down the system, turn
off the power, and replace the disk. Reboot the system.
4. Notify the mass storage subsystem that the disk has been replaced.
If the system was not rebooted to replace the failed disk, run scsimgr before using the new disk
as a replacement for the old disk. For example:
31
# scsimgr replace_wwid –D /dev/rdisk/disk14
This command lets the storage subsystem replace the old disk’s LUN World-Wide-Identifier
(WWID) with the new disk’s LUN WWID. The storage subsystem creates a new LUN instance and
new device special files for the replacement disk.
5. Determine the new LUN instance number for the replacement disk. For example:
# ioscan –m lun
Class I Lun H/W Path Driver S/W State H/W Type Health Description
========================================================================
disk 14 64000/0xfa00/0x0 esdisk NO_HW DEVICE offline HP MSA Vol
/dev/disk/disk14 /dev/rdisk/disk14
...
disk 28 64000/0xfa00/0x1c esdisk CLAIMED DEVICE online HP MS A Vol
0/1/1/1.0x3.0x0
/dev/disk/disk28 /dev/rdisk/disk28
In this example, LUN instance 28 was created for the new disk, with LUN hardware path
64000/0xfa00/0x1c, device special files /dev/disk/disk28 and /dev/rdisk/disk28, at
the same lunpath hardware path as the old disk, 0/1/1/1.0x3.0x0. The old LUN instance 14
for the old disk now has no lunpath associated with it.
Note: If the system was rebooted to replace the failed disk, running ioscan –m lun does not
display the old disk.
6. Assign the old instance number to the replacement disk. For example:
# io_redirect_dsf -d /dev/disk/disk14 -n /dev/disk/disk28
This assigns the old LUN instance number (14) to the replacement disk. In addition, the device
special files for the new disk are renamed to be consistent with the old LUN instance number. The
following ioscan –m lun output shows the result:
# ioscan –m lun /dev/disk/disk14
Class I Lun H/W Path Driver S/W State H/W Type H ealth Description
========================================= ===============================
disk 14 64000/0xfa00/0x1c esdisk CLAIMED DEVICE online HP MSA Vol
0/1/1/1.0x3.0x0
/dev/disk/disk14 /dev/rdisk/disk14
The LUN representation of the old disk with LUN hardware path 64000/0xfa00/0x0 was
removed. The LUN representation of the new disk with LUN hardware path
64000/0xfa00/0x1c was reassigned from LUN instance 28 to LUN instance 14 and its device
special files were renamed as /dev/disk/disk14 and /dev/rdisk/disk14.
7. Restore LVM configuration information to the disk. For example:
# vgcfgrestore -n /dev/vgnn /dev/rdisk/disk14
8. Restore LVM access to the disk.
If you did not reboot the system in step 2, reattach the disk as follows:
# pvchange –a y /dev/disk/disk14
If you did reboot the system, reattach the disk by reactivating the volume group as follows:
32
# vgchange -a y /dev/vgnn
Note: The vgchange command with the -a y option can be run on a volume group that is
deactivated or already activated. It attaches all paths for all disks in the volume group and
resumes automatically recovering any disks in the volume group that had been offline or any disks
in the volume group that were replaced. Therefore, run vgchange only a fter all work has been
completed on all disks and paths in the volume group, and it is necessary to attach them all.
Because all the data on the replaced disk was mirrored, you do not need to do anything else; LVM
automatically synchronizes the data on the disk with the other mirror copies of the data.
Replacing an Unmirrored Nonboot Disk
Use this procedure if any of the physical extents on the disk do not h ave mirror copies elsewhere, and
your disk is not a boot disk.
In this example, the disk to be replaced is at lunpath hardware path 0/1/1/1.0x3.0x0, with device
special files named /dev/disk/disk14 and /dev/rdisk/disk14 . Follow these steps:
1. Save the hardware paths to the disk.
Enter the io scan command and note the hardware paths of the failed disk:
# ioscan –m lun /dev/disk/disk14
Class I Lun H/W Path Driver S/W State H/W Type Health Descr iption
========================================================================
disk 14 64000/0xfa00/0x0 esdisk CLAIMED DEVICE offline HP MSA Vol
0/1/1/1 .0x3.0x0
/dev/disk/disk14 /dev/rdisk/disk14
In this example, the LUN instance number is 14, the LUN hardware path is 64000/0xfa00/0x0,
and the lunpath hardware path is 0/1/1/1.0x3.0x0.
When the failed disk is replaced, a new LUN instance and LUN hardware path are created. To
identify the disk after it is replaced, you must use the lunpath hardware path
(0/1/1/1.0x3.0x0).
2. Halt LVM access to the disk.
If the disk is not hot-swappable, power off the system to replace it. By shutting down the system,
you halt LVM access to the disk, so you can skip this step. If the disk is hot-swappable, disable
u ser and LVM access to all unmirrored logical volumes.
First, disable user access to all unmirrored logical volumes. Halt any applications and unmount
any file systems using these logical volumes. This prevents the applications or file systems from
writing inconsistent data over the newly restored replacement disk.
For each unmirrored logical volume using the disk:
a. Use the fuser command to make sure no one is accessing the logical volume, either as
a raw device or as a file system. If users have files open in the file system or it is their
current working directory, fuser reports their process IDs.
For example, if the logical volume was /dev/vg01/lvol1, enter:
# fuser -cu dev/vg01/lvol1
/dev/vg01/lvol1: 27815c(root) 27184c(root)
33
b. If fuser reports process IDs using the logical volume, use the ps command to map the
list of process IDs to processes, and determine whether you can halt those processes. For
example, look up processes 27815 and 27184 as follows:
# ps -fp27815 -p27184
UID PID PPID C STIME TTY TIME COMMAND
root 27815 27184 0 09:04:05 pts/0 0:00 vi test.c
root 27184 27182 0 08:26:24 pts/0 0:00 -sh
c. If so, use fuser with the –k option to kill all processes accessing the logical volume.
The example processes are noncritical, so kill them as follows:
# fuser -ku dev/vg01/lvol1
/dev/vg01/lvol1: 27815c(root) 27184c(root)
d. If the logical volume is being used as a file system, unmount it as follows:
# umount /dev/vg01/lvol1
Note: If you cannot stop the applications using the logical volume, or you cannot
unmount the file system, you must shut down the system.
After disabling user access to the unmirrored logical volumes, disable LVM access to the
disk:
# pvchange -a N /dev/disk/disk14
3. Replace the disk.
For the hardware details on how to replace the disk, see the hardware administrator’s guide for
the system or disk array.
If the disk is hot-swappable, replace it.
If the disk is not hot-swappable, shut down the system, turn off the power, and replac e the disk.
Reboot the system.
Notify the mass storage subsystem that the disk has been replaced.
If the system was not rebooted to replace the failed disk, run scsimgr before using the new disk
as a replacement for the old disk. For example:
# scsimgr replace_wwid –D /dev/rdisk/disk14
This command lets the storage subsystem replace the old disk’s LUN World-Wide-Identifier
(WWID) with the new disk’s LUN WWID. The storag e subsystem creates a new LUN instance and
new device special files for the replacement disk.
4. Determine the new LUN instance number for the replacement disk. For example:
# ioscan –m lun
Class I Lun H/W Path Driver S/W State H/W Type Health Description
========================================================================
disk 14 64000/0xfa00/0x0 esdisk NO_HW DEVICE offline HP MSA Vol
/dev/disk/disk14 /dev/rdisk/disk14
...
disk 28 64000/0xfa00/0x1c esdisk CLAIMED DEVICE online HP MSA Vol
0/1/1/1.0x3.0x0
/dev/disk/disk28 /dev/rdisk/disk28
34
In this example, LUN instance 28 was created for the new disk, with LUN hardware path
64000/0xfa00/0x1c, device special files /dev/disk/disk28 and /dev/rdisk/disk28, at
the same lunpath hardware path as the old disk, 0/1/1/1.0x3.0x0. The old LUN instance 14
for the old disk now has no lunpath associated with it.
Note: If the system was rebooted to replace the failed disk, ioscan –m lun does not display
the old disk.
5. Assign the old instance number to the replacement disk. For example:
# io_redirect_dsf -d /dev/disk/disk14 -n /dev/disk/disk28
This assigns the old LUN insta nce number (14) to the replacement disk. In addition, the device
special files for the new disk are renamed to be consistent with the old LUN instance number.
The following ioscan –m lun output shows the result:
# ioscan –m lun /dev/disk/disk14
Class I Lun H/W Path Driver S/W Sta te H/W Type Health Description
====================================================== ==================
disk 14 64000/0xfa00/0x1c esdisk CLAIMED DEVICE onlin e HP MSA Vol
0/1/1/1.0x3.0x0
/dev/disk/disk14 /dev/rdisk/disk14
The LUN representation of the old disk with LUN hardware path 64000/0xfa00/0x0 was
removed. The LUN representation of the new disk with LUN hardware path
64000/0xfa00/0x1c was reassigned from LUN instance 28 to LUN instance 14 and its device
special files were renamed as /dev/disk/disk14 and /dev/rdisk/disk14.
6. Restore LVM configuration in formation to the new disk. For example:
# vgcfgrestore -n /dev/vgnn /dev/rdisk/disk14
7. Restore LVM access to the disk.
If you did not reboot the system in step 2, reattach the disk as follows:
# pvchange –a y /dev/disk/disk14
If you did reboot the system, reattach the disk by reactivating the volume group as follows:
# vgchange -a y /dev/vgnn
NOTE: You can run the vgchange command with the -a y option on a volume group that is
deactivated or already activated. It attaches all paths for all disks in the volume group and
resumes automatically recovering any disks in the volume group that were offline or any disks in
the volume group that were replaced. Therefore, run vgchange only after all work has been
completed on all disks and paths in the volume group, and it is necessary to attach them all.
8. Recover any lost data.
LVM recovers all the mirrored logical volumes on the disk, and starts that recovery when the
volume group is activated.
For all the unmirrored logical volumes that you identified in step 2, restore the data from backup
and re-enable user access as follows:
35
o For raw volumes, restore the full raw volume using the utility that was used to create your
backup. Then restart the application.
o For file systems, you must recreate the file systems first. For example:
# newfs -F fstype /dev/vgnn/rlvolnn
Use the logical volume's character device file for the newfs command. For file systems that
had nondefault configurations, see newfs(1M) for the correct options.
After creating the file system, mount it under the mount point that it previously occupied. Then
restore the data for that file system from your full backups.
Tip: To make the file s ystem recreation step easier, record how they were originally created.
You can change other file system parameters, such as those used to tune file system
performance. The file system must be at least as large as bef ore the disk failure.
Replacing a Mirrored Boot Disk
There are two additional operations you must perform when replacing a mirrored boot disk:
1. You must initialize boot information on the replacement disk.
2. If the replacement requires rebooting the system, and the primary boot disk is being replaced, you
must boot from the alternate boot disk .
In this example, the disk to be replaced is at lu npath hardware path 0/1/1/1.0x3.0x0, with device
special files named /dev/disk/disk14 and /dev/rdisk/disk14. The system is an HP Integrity
server, so the physical volume names must specify the HP-UX partition on the boot disk
(/dev/disk/disk14_p2 and /dev/disk/disk14_p2).
1. Save the hardware paths to the disk.
Run the ioscan command and note the hardware paths of the failed disk as follows:
# ioscan –m lun /dev/disk/disk14
Class I Lun H/W Path Driver S/W State H/W Type Health Description
========================================================== ==============
disk 14 64000/0xfa00/0x0 esdisk CLAIMED DEVICE offl ine HP MSA Vol
0/1/1/1.0x3.0x0
/dev/disk/disk14 /dev/rdisk/disk14
/dev/disk/disk14_p1 /dev/rdisk/disk14_p1
/dev/disk/disk14_p2 /dev/rdisk/disk14 _p2
/dev/disk/disk14_p3 /dev/rdisk/disk14 _p3
In this example, the LUN instance number is 14, the LUN hardware path is 64000/0xfa00/0x0,
and the lunpath hardware path is 0/1/1/1.0x3.0x0.
When the failed disk is replaced, a new LUN instance and LUN hardware path are created. To
identify the disk after it is replaced, you must use the lunpath hardware path
(0/1/1/1.0x3.0x0).
2. Halt LVM access to the disk.
If the disk is not hot-swappable, power off the system to replace it. By shutting down the system,
you halt LVM access to the disk, so you can skip this step.
If the disk is hot-swappable, detach the device using the –a option of the pvchange command:
36
# pvchange -a N /dev/disk/disk14_p2
Note: On an HP 9000 server, the boot disk is not partitioned so the physical volume refers to the
entire disk, not the HP-UX partition. Enter the following command:
# pvchange -a N /dev/disk/disk14
3. Replace the disk.
For the hardware details on how to replace the disk, see the hardware administrator’s guide for
the system or disk array.
If the disk is hot-swappable, replace it.
If the disk is not hot-swappable, shut down the system, turn off the power, and replace the disk.
Reboot the system. Two problems can occur:
• If you replaced the disk that you normally boot from, the replaceme nt disk does not contain the
information needed by the boot loader. In this case, interrupt the boot process and boot from
the mirror boot disk, which is c onfigured as the alternate boot path.
• If there are only two disks in the root volume group, the system probably fails its quorum check
as described in Volume Group Activation Failures. It can panic early in the boot process with
the message:
panic: LVM: Configuration failure
In this situation, you must override quorum to boot su ccessfully. Do this by interrupting the
boot process and adding the –lq option to the boot command.
For information on the boot process and how to select boot options, see the HP-UX System
Administrator's Guide: Configuration Management.
4. Notify the mass storage subsystem that the disk has been replaced.
If the system was not rebooted to replace the failed disk, run scsimgr before using the new disk
as a replacement for the old disk. For example:
# scsimgr replace_wwid –D /dev/rdisk/disk14
This command allows the storage subsystem to replace the old disk ’s LUN World-Wide-Identifier
(WWID) with the new disk’s LUN WWID. The storage su bsystem creates a new LUN instance and
new device special files for the replacement disk.
5. Determine the new LUN instance number for the replacement disk. For example:
# ioscan –m lun
Class I Lun H/ W Path Driver S/W State H/W Type Health Description
========================================================================
disk 14 64000/0xfa00/0x0 esdisk NO_HW DEVICE offline HP MSA Vol
/dev/disk/disk14 /dev/rdisk/disk14
/dev/disk/disk14_p1 /dev/rdisk/disk14_p1
/dev/disk/disk14_p2 /dev/rdisk/disk14_p2
/dev/disk/disk14_p3 /dev/rdisk/disk14_p3
...
disk 28 64000/0xfa00/0x1c esdisk CLAIMED DEVICE online HP MSA Vol
0/1/1/1.0x3.0x0
/dev/disk/disk28 /dev/rdisk/disk28
37
In this example, LUN instance 28 was created for the new disk, with LUN hardware path
64000/0xfa00/0x1c, device special files /dev/disk/disk28 and /dev/rdisk/disk28, at
the same lunpath hardware path as the old disk, 0/1/1/1.0x3.0x0. The old LUN instance 14
for the old disk now has no lunpath associated with it.
Note: If the system was rebooted to replace the failed disk, then ioscan –m lun does not
display the old disk.
6. (HP Integrity servers only) Partition the replacement disk.
Partition the disk using the idisk command and a partition description file, and create the
partition device files using insf, as described in Mirrorin g the Root Volume on Integrity Servers .
7. Assign the old instance number to the replacement disk. For example:
# io_redirect_dsf -d /dev/disk/disk14 -n /dev/disk/disk28
This assigns the old LUN instance number ( 14) to the replacement disk. In addition, the device
special files for the new disk are renamed to be consistent with the old LUN instance number.
The following ioscan –m lun output shows the result:
# ioscan –m lun /dev/disk/disk14
Class I Lun H/W Path Driver S/W State H/W Type Health Description
========================================================================
disk 14 64000/0xfa00/0x1c esdisk CLAIMED DEVICE online HP MSA Vol
0/1/1/1.0x3.0x0
/dev/disk/disk14 /dev/rdisk/disk14
/dev/disk/disk14_p1 /dev/rdisk/disk14_p1
/dev/disk/disk14_p2 /dev /rdisk/disk14_p2
/dev/disk/disk14_p3 /dev /rdisk/disk14_p3
The LUN representation of the old disk with LUN hardware path 64000/0xfa00/0x0 was
removed. The LUN representation of the new disk with LUN hardware path
64000/0xfa00/0x1c was reassigned from LUN instance 28 to LUN instance 14 and its device
special files were renamed as /dev/disk/disk14 and /dev/rdisk/disk14.
8. Restore LVM configuration information to the new disk. For example:
# vgcfgrestore -n /dev/vg00 /dev/rdisk/disk14_p2
Note: On an HP 9000 server, the boot disk is not partitioned, so the physical volume refers to the
entire disk, not the HP-UX partition. Enter the following command:
# vgcfgrestore -n /dev/vg00 /dev/rdisk/disk14
9. Restore LVM access to the disk.
If you did not reboot the system in step 2, reattach the disk as follows:
# pvchange –a y /dev/disk/disk14_p2
On an HP 9000 server, use this command:
# pvchange –a y /dev/disk/disk14
If you did reboot the system, reattach the disk by reactivating the volume group as follows:
# vgchange -a y /dev/vg00
Note: The vgchange command with the -a y option can be run on a volume group that is
deactivated or already activated. It attaches all paths for all disks in the volume group and
resumes automatically recovering any disks in the volume group that were offline or any disks in
38
the volume group that were replaced. Therefore, run vgchange only after all work has been
completed on all disks and paths in the volume group, and it is necessary to attach them all.
10. Initialize boot information on the disk.
For an HP Integrity server, set up the boot area and update the autoboot file in the disk's EFI
partition as described in step 5 and step 6 of Mirroring the Root Volum e on Integrity Servers listed
in Appendix D.
For an HP 9000 server, set up the boot area and update the autoboot file as described in step 4
and step 5 of Mirroring the Root Volume Boot Disk on PA-RISC Servers in Appendix D.
Replacing an Unmirrored Boot Disk
With the failure of an unmirrored boot disk, you have lost the only copy of information that is required
to boot the system. You must reinstall to the replacement disk , or recover it from an Ignite-UX backup.
Disk Replacement Flowchart
See the disk replacement flowchart documented on the following page.
39
Start
Disk Gather all required information
Replaced
Eg :
No - What PV is to be replaced
Is Disk -Is the PV Hot swappable
Replaced -What LV’s are affected
- What their layout ? Are they mirrored
- Is the PV root Disk or part of root VG
Yes - Note down the ioscan -m lun <dsf> output
Check Disk is Okay
Try to close all affected
Yes
No - halt applications
The Disk is not Any unmirrored logical - fuser -cu /mnt
No seen with Volumes? - ps -f ppids
Is Disk Okay ? ioscan(1M) output - fuser -ku /mnt
or not readable. - umount /mnt
Correct and restart
Yes
Yes
Yes
Check Data on Disk (use fstyp(1M)) Successfully
End Pvchange -a N PV
Disabled ?
The disk appears to have No
some data or the disk
Yes belongs to some volume No Shutdown the system, Tur
Data on Disk ? manager. Please replace the
Hot Swappable ? the power, Replace the d
correct disk with an unused
and Restart
and restart
Yes
No
Replace the disk
Get the VG name to Check Root
which the PV belongs to Disk
Notify the mass storage subsytem that the
disk is replaced by running the command
scsimgr replace_wwid -D <dsf>
No
Activate the VG
Is VG Active ?
and Restart Determine the new LUN instance number
for the replacement disk with command
ioscan -m lun
Yes
Assign the old LUN instance number to the
EndCheck and collect Config info for VG replacement disk using the command
io_redirect_dsf -d <old dsf> -n <new dsf>
Verify using the command
Couldn’t find the configuration. Ensure ioscan -m lun <old dsf>
prior to restarting, below information is
No available.
Is Good Config
- pvdisplay PV info
exists ?
- Lvdisplay for each lvol on PV info
- /etc/lvmconf/<vg_name>.conf is Disk
accessible Replaced
Yes
Check root
Disk
40
Check
Root Disk
No
Root Disk?
Boot normally
If the disk is not hot-swappable one
BCH>boot pri Yes
ISL>hpux -lq
Ignite/UX Recovery
No
Is Primary root
Recover from a
mirrored?
Recovery tape or Ignite
Server
Mirrored ? Yes
No Boot from Mirror
BCH>boot alt end
Restore Header and ISL>hpux -lq
Attach PV
#vgcfgrestore -n vg PV
#vgchange -a y VG Yes Partition boot disk
(Integrity Servers)
LIF/BDRA
Config Procedure
Recover data from backup
Eg..
#newfs -F vxfs /dev/vgtest/rlvol1
#mount /dev/vgtest/lvol1 /mnt
Restore Header and
Restore data eg using frecover from tape: Attach PV
#frecover -v -f /dev/rmt/lm -I /mnt #vgcfgrestore -n vg PV
#vgchange -a y VG
Restart the application
Synchronize Mirrors
#vgsync vgtest
end
41
Conclusion
In your role as system manager, you will encounter disk failures. LVM can lessen the impact of those
disk failures, enabling you to configure your data storage to make a di sk failure transparent to users,
and to keep your system and data available during the recovery process. B y making use of hardware
features, such as hot-swappable disks, and software features, such as mirroring and online disk
replacement, you can maximize your system availability and minimize data loss due to disk failure.
42
Appendix A: Using Device File Types
Prior to the HP-UX 11i v3 release, there were only legacy device special files. Starting with the HP-UX
11i v3 release, mass storage devices, such as disk devic es and tape devices, have two types of
device files, persistent device special files and legacy device special files. You can use both to access
the mass storage device independently, and can co-exist on the same s ystem.
A legacy device special file is locked to a particular physical hardware path, and does not support
agile addressing. This device special file contains hardware path information such as SCSI bus,
target, and LUN (Logical Unit Number) in the device file name and minor number. Specifically, the
c lass and instance portions of the device special file name indicate hardware path information and
are in the format c#t#d# as follows:
c# The instance number assigned by the operating system to the interface card. It is a
decimal number with a range of 0 to 255. There is no direct correlation between instance
number and physical slot number.
t# The target address on a remote bus (for example, SCSI address). It is a decimal number
with a typical range of 0 to 15.
d# The device unit number at the target address (for example, the LUN in a SCSI device). It
is a decimal number with a typical range of 0 to 7.
A persistent device special file is associated with a LUN hardware path, transparently supporting
agile addressing and multipathing. In other words, a persistent device special file is unchanged if the
LUN is moved from one HBA to another, moved from one switch or hub port to another, presented via
a different target port to the host, or configured with multiple hardware paths. Like the LUN hardware
path, the binding of device special file to device persists across reboots, bu t is not guaranteed to
persist across installations.
Persistent and Legacy device special files are represented as follows:
• Persistent device special files, (/dev/disk/disk3), or
• Legacy device special file names, (/dev/dsk/c0t6d6)
To display the mapping between the legacy an d persistent device special files, use the ioscan
command. Either a legacy or persistent special file can be specified as an argument. Multiple legacy
special files mapping to the persistent specia l file are separated by a white space, as follows:
# ioscan -m dsf /dev/disk/disk240
Persistent DSF Legacy DSF(s)
========================================
/dev/disk/disk240 /dev/dsk/c17t1d2
/dev/dsk/c19t1d2
# ioscan -m dsf /dev/dsk/c17t1d2
Persistent DSF Legacy DSF(s)
========================================
/dev/disk/disk240 /dev/dsk/c17t1d2
# ioscan -m dsf /dev/dsk/c19t1d2
Persistent DSF Legacy DSF(s)
========================================
/dev/disk/disk240 /dev/dsk/c19t1d2
You can derive hardware path information, class names, and instance numbers from ioscan output;
see ioscan(1M) for more information. There are three different types of paths to a device: legacy
hardware path, lunpath hardware path, and LUN hardware path. For more information, see intro(7).
43
Appendix B: Device Special File Naming Model
HP-UX 11i v3 introduces a new representation of mass storage devices called the agile view. In this
representation, the device special file (DSF) name for each disk no longer contains path (or link)
information. There are two DFS types:
• The multipathed disk has a single persistent DSF regardless of the number of physical paths to it.
• The legacy view, represented by the legacy DSF, continues to exist.
You can use both DSF types to access a given mass storage device independently, and both can
coexist on a system.
While LVM supports the use of both DSF naming models within the same volume group, you can
configure the volume group to use both styles of DSFs: on a given system, some volume groups can
use legacy DSFs, others persistent DSFs, and the remaining c an use a mix of persistent and legacy
DSFs. Supporting a mixed mode configuration allows a volume group that currently uses one DSF
naming model to be extended to include a different DSF naming model (see vgextend(1M) for more
information). Any such configuration results in a mixed mode volume group. Mixed mode facilitates a
phased migration from legacy to persistent naming model.
HP recommends using persiste nt DSFs for LVM configurations and encourages configuring new
volume groups using persistent DSFs. To fully utilize all the capabilities of th e new mass storage stack,
HP recommends migrating volume groups from legacy DSFs to persistent DSFs. HP provides
/usr/contrib/bin/vgdsf to facilitate this migration. This script works for both root and non-root
volume groups. See the For More Information section in the LVM Migration from legacy to persistent
naming model white paper for more details.
Most of the LVM commands are backward compatible, and work transparently with both legacy and
persistent DSFs. New options have been added to the vgimport(1M) and vgscan(1M) commands, to
appropriately choose the required DSF naming model.
Starting with the HP-UX 11i v3 release, HP recommends using persistent DSFs for LVM configurations
and advises you to configure all new volume groups using persistent DSFs. T o verify if the legacy
naming model is enabled on a system, use the insf(1M) command. To disable the legacy naming
model, use rmsf(1M). Note that to configure new volumes groups using persistent DSFs, you do not
need to disable the legacy naming model (which removes all legacy I/ O nodes and their device
special files on the system). The rmsf command does not complete successfully if any legacy I/O
nodes are in the open state. If this is the case, the command fails and returns information, suc h as
process name (PID) and the device special file, about the processes that have opened the legacy I/O
nodes.
For more information on the benefits of migration, see The Next Generation Mass Storage Stack white
paper.
This appendix lists the new options that were added to some LVM commands to specify the
preference of DSF naming model. Also, it lists the behavioral differences of commands for each
message, the cause is listed, and an administrator action is recommended. The appendix is divided
into two sections, one for the new options provided to specify the DSF naming model and one for the
behavioral differences of commands after disabling the legacy naming model.
New Options to Specify the DSF Naming Model
Most LVM commands are transparent to the DSF naming model used, bit new options were added to
the vgimport(1M) (option -N) and vgscan(1M) (options –N and –B) commands to specify the
preference of DSF naming model. These options are detailed in their respective manpages, but are
summarized in the following table:
44
vgimport –N Configure the volume group using persistent DSFs. You can only use this
option together with the scan option, –s. In the absence of the -N
option, legacy DSFs are used.
vgscan Recover the volume group information by using LVM data structures in
kernel memory, and by probing all LVM disks o n the system.
In the case of volume groups activated at least once since the last system
boot, the /etc/lvmtab fil e is recovered with legacy and persistent
DSFs, as was the configuration during activation. The -N and -B options
allow the user to override this default behavi or.
vgscan –N Recover the /etc/lvmtab file using persistent DSFs, with the following
exception: If there are volume groups activated that are using legacy
DSFs, vgscan populates /etc/lvmtab using legacy DSFs for those
physical volumes.
vgscan –B Recover the /etc/lvmtab file using both persistent and legacy DSFs.
Persistent DSFs are added before legacy DSFs.
Behavioral Differences of Commands After Disabling the Legacy Naming
Model
By default, and to maintain backward compatibility, the vgscan, vgscan, –p and vgimport -s
commands execute in the legacy naming model. You need to invoke these commands together with
the –N option, if the legacy naming model has been disabled using the rmsf –l command. In the
absence of the –N option, these commands fail with the following error message:
“The legacy naming model has been disabled on the system.
Try with the -N option."
45
Appendix C: Volume Group Versions and LVM
Configuration Files
Volume Group Version
With the March 2008 release of HP-UX 11i v3, LVM supports a new version of volume group- Version
2.0. Version 1.0 is the version supported on all current and previous versions of HP-UX 11i.
A Version 2.0 volume group is a volume group whose metadata layout is different from the one used
for Version 1.0 volume groups. Version 2.0 enables the configuration of larger volume groups (up to
512), logical volumes (up to 511), physical volumes (up to 511) and several other volume group
parameters. A Version 2.0 volume group can be managed the same way as a Version 1.0 volume
group, using the same user interface. But features such as sparing, bad block relocation, cluster lock,
boot, dump, and primary swap are not supported on Version 2.0 volume groups. Also, the
vgmodify, pvck, lvlnboot and lvrmboot commands are not suppo rted on Version 2.0
volume groups.
With the September 2008 release of HP-UX 11i v3, LVM supports another version of volume group-
version 2.1. You can manage a Version 2.1 volume group the same way as a Version 1.0 volume
group, using the same user interface. Version 2.1 is similar to Version 2.0, but allows configuration of
much greater number of volume groups (up to 2048), physical volumes (up to 2048) and logical
volumes (up to 2047). With this release, cl uster lock is supported on Version 2.x volume groups.
Device Special Files
With the new volume group version, LVM device special files have changed. For Version 1.0 volume
groups, procedures to create the device files will not need to change. For Version 2.x volume groups,
there are a few differences illustrated in the following figure:
• Device special files for Version 1.0 volume groups are unchanged
• Device special files for Version 2.x volume groups have a new major number (128)
• Device special files for Version 2.x volume groups have a different minor number encoding scheme
46
1.0 Minor Number Encoding:
brw-r----- 1 root sys 64 0x120001 Jun 23 2006 lvol1
Volume group Logical volume number
number 18 01 (managed by LVM)
Reserved (picked by customer)
Bits 11 & 23 Reserved. If non
zero then no assumptions can
2.0 Minor Number Encoding: be made about logical volume
or volume group number
brw-r----- 1 root sys 128 0x014000 Jun 23 2006 lvol1
Volume group number 20 Logical volume
(picked by customer or LVM) number (managed
by LVM)
lvmtab, lvmtab_p
LVM has a well known configuration file /etc/lvmtab. With the introduction of Version 2.x volume
groups , LVM uses a new configuration file, /etc/lvmtab_p. The differences between the two
versio ns are as follows:
• /etc/lvmtab is a private binary file. It contains information only related to Version 1.0 volume
groups. It is compatible with all supported HP-UX releases.
• /etc/lvmtab_p is a new private binary file. It contains information only related to Version 2.x
volume gro ups. It has a different internal structure from lvmtab and contains additional
information.
For example:
# strings /etc/lvmtab_p
/dev/vgtestl2
A0000000000000004Sun Mar 16 03:02:19 2007241fa9de-dba3-11da-9cd2-
23efa80dc3e7
/dev/disk/disk79
/dev/disk/disk80
/dev/disk/disk81
/dev/disk/disk82
/dev/disk/disk83
/dev/disk/disk84
/dev/disk/disk85
For more details see the following white papers available from the docs.hp.com website:
• HP-UX Logical Volume Manager and MirrorDisk/UX Release Notes
• HP-UX 11i v3 March 2008 (B.11.31)
• HP-UX LVM Supported Limits
• LVM Version 2.0 Volume Groups in HP-UX 11i v3
47
Appendix D: Procedures
This section contains details on some of the procedures described in earlier sections of this document.
Mirroring the Root Volume on PA-RISC Servers
To set up a mirrored root c onfiguration, you must add a disk to the root volume group, mirror all the
root logical volumes onto it, and make it bootable. For this example, the disk is at path 2/0/7.15.0
and has device special files named /dev/rdsk/c2t15d0 and /dev/dsk/c2t15d0.
1. Use the insf command with the -e option to make sure the device files are in place. For
example:
# insf -e -H 2/0/7.15.0
You now have the following legacy device files for this disk:
/dev/dsk/c2t15d0 The entire disk (block access)
/dev/rdsk/c2t15d0 The entire disk (character access)
Starting with HP-UX 11i v3, you must have the persistent device special files as well. To achieve
this, use the insf command with the –e option or -eC disk option. If you are running insf
–e –H <hw_path>, you must run the insf command for both the legacy and new style lun
hardware path.
# insf -e -H 0/5/1/0.5.14.0.0.0.1
You now have the following persistent device files for this disk :
/dev/disk/disk96 The e ntire disk (block access)
/dev/rdisk/disk96 The entire disk (character access)
2. Enter the pvcreate command with the -B option to create a physical volume:
# pvcreate -B /dev/rdsk/c2t15d0
3. Enter vgextend to add the physical volume to your existing root volume grou p:
# vgextend /dev/vg00 /dev/dsk/c2t15d0
4. Enter the mkboot command to set up the boot area:
# mkboot –l /dev/rdsk/c2t15d0
To check, use the lifls command to list the contents of LIF directory on standard output:
# lifls –l /dev/rdsk/c2t15d0
5. Enter the mkboot command to add an autoboot file to the disk boot area. If you expect to boot
from this disk only when you lose quorum, you can use the alternate string “hpux –lq” to disable
quorum checking (This not recommended; use this with caution to prevent data loss):
# mkboot –a “hpux” /dev/rdsk/c2t15d0
Note: By default, LVM enforces the presence of less than 50% of a volume group’s physical
volumes being available at volume group activation time. For example, if the root volume group
48
contains two physical volumes, and one of them is not accessible, the system rejects to boot unless
you disable the quorum check using the –lq option.
6. Enter lvextend command to mirror each logical volume in vg00 (the ro ot volume group) onto
the specified physical volume. You must extend the logical volumes in the same order that they are
configured on the original boot disk. Use the pvdisplay command with the -v option to
determine the list of logical volumes and their order. For example:
# pvdisplay -v /dev/dsk/c0t6d0 | grep 'current.*0000 $'
00000 current /dev/vg00/lvol1 00000
00038 current /dev/vg00/lvol2 00000
00550 current /dev/vg00/lvol3 00000
00583 current /dev/vg00/lvol4 00000
00608 current /dev/vg00/lvol5 00000
00611 current /dev/vg00/lvol6 00000
00923 current /dev/vg00/lvol7 00000
01252 current /dev/vg00/lvol8 00000
In this example, mirror the logical volumes as follows:
# lvextend –m 1 /dev/vg00/lvol1 /dev/dsk/c2t15d0
# lvextend –m 1 /dev/vg00/lvol2 /dev/dsk/c2t15d0
# lvextend –m 1 /dev/vg00/lvol3 /dev/dsk/c2t15d0
# lvextend –m 1 /dev/vg00/lvol4 /dev/dsk/c2t15d0
# lvextend –m 1 /dev/vg00/lvol5 /dev/dsk/c2t15d0
# lvextend –m 1 /dev/vg00/lvol6 /dev/dsk/c2t15d0
# lvextend –m 1 /dev/vg00/lvol7 /dev/dsk/c2t15d0
# lvextend –m 1 /dev/vg00/lvol8 /dev/dsk/c2t15d0
The lvextend operation can take several minutes to copy all the data from the original copy of
the data to the mirrored extents. The logical vo lumes are still accessible to user applications during
th is command.
To check the progress of the synchronization, enter:
# lvdisplay -v $(find /dev/vg00 -type b) | grep stale | wc –l
You can use a shell loop to extend a bunch of lvols automatically as follows:
# for lvol in lvol1 lvol2 lvol3 ... (specify any LV you need to mirror)
> do
> lvextend –m 1 /dev/vgXX/$lvol /dev/dsk/cXtXdX
> done
7. To update the root volume group information, enter:
# lvlnboot -R /dev/vg00
8. To verify that the mirrored disk is displayed as a boot disk and that the boot, root, and swap
logical volumes appear to be on both disks, enter:
# lvlnboot –v
9. To specify the mirror disk as the alternate boot path in nonvolatile memory, enter:
# setboot –a 2/0/7.15.0
10. To add a line to /stand/bootconf for the new boot disk, use vi or another text editor as
follows:
# vi /stand/bootconf
l /dev/dsk/c2t15d0
In this example, l denotes LVM.
49
Mirroring the Root Volume on Integrity Servers
The procedure to mirror the root disk on Integrity servers is similar to the procedure for PA-RISC
servers. The difference is that Integrity server boot disks are partitioned; you must set up the partitions,
copy utilities to the EFI partition, and use the HP-UX partition device files for LVM commands.
For this example, the disk is at hardware path 0/1/1/0.1.0 , with a device special file named
/dev/rdsk/c2t1d0.
1. Partition the disk by using the idisk command and a partition description file.
First, clear the previous partition configuration on the disk:
# idisk –Rw /dev/rdsk/c2t1d0
a. Create a partition description file. For example:
# vi /tmp/pdf
In this example, the partition description file contains:
3
EFI 500MB
HPUX 100%
HPSP 400MB
b. Partition the disk using idisk and the partition description file created in step 1a:
# idisk -f /tmp/ pdf -w /dev/rdsk/c2t1d0
To verify that your partitions are correctly laid out, enter the following command:
# idisk /dev /rdsk/c2t1d0
2. Enter the insf command with the -e option to create the legacy device files for all the partitions:
# insf -e -H 0/1/1/0.1.0
You now have the following device files for this disk :
/dev/dsk/c2t1d0 The entire disk (blo ck access)
/dev/rdsk/c2t1d0 The entire disk (character access)
/dev/dsk/c2t1d0s1 The EFI partition (block access)
/dev/rdsk/c2t1d0s1 The EFI partition (character access)
/dev/dsk/c2t1d0s2 The HP-UX partition (block access)
/dev/rdsk/c2t1d0s2 The HP-UX partition (character access)
/dev/dsk/c2t1d0s3 The Service partition (block access)
/dev/rdsk/c2t1d0s3 The Service partition (character access)
Starting with the HP-UX 11i v3 release, you must have the persistent device special files. To
achieve this, use the insf command with the –e option or -eC disk option. If you are running
insf –e –H <hw_path>, you must run the insf command for both the legacy and new style
lun hardware path. For example:
# insf -e -H 0/5/1/0.5.14.0.0.0.1
50
You now have the following device files for this disk:
/dev/disk/disk75 The entire disk (block access)
/dev/rdisk/disk75 The entire disk (character access)
/dev/disk/disk75_p1 The EFI partition (block access)
/dev/rdisk/disk75_p1 The EFI partition (c haracter access)
/dev/disk/disk75_p2 The HP-UX partition (block access)
/dev/rdisk/disk75_p2 The HP-UX partition (character access)
/dev/disk/disk75_p3 The Service partition (block access)
/dev/rdisk/disk75_p3 The Service partition (character access)
Use efi_fsinit to initialize the FAT filesystem on the EFI partition:
# efi_fsinit -d /dev/rdsk/c2t1d0s1
3. Create a physical volume using pvcreate with the -B option. Be sure to use the device file
denoting the HP-UX partition.
# pvcreate -B /dev/rdsk/c2t1d0s2
4. Add the physical volume to your existing root vol ume group using vgextend:
# vgextend /dev/vg00 /dev/dsk/c2t1d0s2
5. Use the mkboot command to set up the boot area. Specify the -e and -l options to copy EFI
utilities to the EFI partition, and use the device special file for the entire disk:
# mkboot –e –l /dev/rdsk/c2t1d0
To list the contents of the EFI directory, enter the efi_ls command:
# efi_ls -d /dev/rdsk/c2t1d0s1
FileName Last Modified Size
EFI/ 11/ 9/2006 0
STARTUP.NSH 11/ 9/2006 296
total space 523251712 bytes, free space 519856128 bytes
To list the contents of the LIF directory, enter the lifls command:
# lifls –l /dev/rdsk/c2t1d0s2
volume ISL10 data size 7984 directory size 8 06/04/19 14:02:34
filename type start size implement created
=============================================================
ISL -12800 584 242 0 06/04/19 14:02:34
AUTO -12289 832 1 0 06/04/19 14:02:34
HPUX -12928 840 1024 0 06/04/19 14:02:34
PAD -12290 1864 1468 0 06/04/19 14:02:34
LABEL BIN 3336 8 0 06/11/09 06:22:46
Enter the following to check the contents of the AUTO file on EFI partition on primary disk:
# efi_cp –d /dev/rdsk/c1t0d1s1 –u /EFI/HPUX/AUTO /tmp/prim
# cat /tmp/prim
6. To update the autoboot file in the EFI partition, follow these steps:
a. Create an AUTO file in the current directory. If you expect to boot from this disk only when you
have lost quorum, you can use the alternate string “boot vmunix –lq” to disable quorum
checking (This not recommended; use this with caution to prevent data loss):
51
# echo “boot vmunix” > ./AUTO
b. Copy the file fro m the current directory into the new disk EFI partition. Be sure to use the
device file with the s1 suffix:
# efi_cp -d /dev/rdsk/c2t1d0s1 ./AUT O /efi/hpux/auto
c. To c heck the contents of the AUTO file on EFI partition on mirror disk:
# efi_cp –d /dev/rdsk/c2t0d0s1 –u /EFI/HPUX/AUTO /tmp/mir
# cat /tmp/mir
boot vmunix
7. Use the lvextend command to mirror each logical volume in vg00 (the root volume group) onto
the specified physical volume. You must extend the logical v olumes in the same order that they are
configured on the original boot disk. Use th e pvdisplay command with the -v option to
determine the list of logical volumes and the ir order. For example:
# pvdisplay -v /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s 2 | grep 'current.*0000 $'
00000 current /dev/vg00/lvo l1 00000
00010 current /dev/vg00/lvo l2 00000
00138 current /dev/vg00 /lvol3 00000
00151 current /dev/vg00/lvol4 00000
00158 current /dev/vg00/lvol5 00000
00159 current /dev/vg00/lvol6 00000
00271 current /dev/vg00/lvol7 00000
00408 current /dev/vg00/lvol8 00000
In this example, mirror the logical volumes as foll ows:
# lvextend –m 1 /dev/vg00/lvol1 /dev/dsk/c2t1d0s2
# lvextend –m 1 /dev/vg00/lvol2 /dev/dsk/c2t1d0s2
# lvextend –m 1 /dev/vg00/lvol3 /dev/dsk/c2t1d0s2
# lvexte nd –m 1 /dev/vg00/lvol4 /dev/dsk/c2t1d0s2
# lvextend –m 1 /dev/vg00/lvol5 /dev/ dsk/c2t1d0s2
# lvextend –m 1 /dev/vg00/lvol6 /dev/dsk/c2t1 d0s2
# lvextend –m 1 /dev/vg00/lvol7 /dev/dsk/c2t1d0s2
# lvextend –m 1 /dev/vg00/lvol8 /dev/ds k/c2t1d0s2
The lvextend operation can take several minu tes to copy all the data from the original copy of
the data to th e mirrored extents. The logical volumes are still accessible to users applications
during this command.
To check the progress of the synchronization, you can use the following:
# lvdisplay -v $(find /dev/vg00 -type b) | grep stal e | wc –l
You can use a shell loop to extend a bunch of lvols automatically as follows:
# for lvol in lvol1 lvol2 lvol3 ... (specify any LV you need to mirror)
> do
> lvextend –m 1 /dev/vgXX/$lvol /dev/dsk/cXtXdX
> done
8. Update the root volume group information:
# lvlnboot -R /dev/vg00
9. Verify that the mirrored disk is displayed as a boot disk and that the boot, root, and swap logical
volumes appear on both disks:
# lvlnboot –v
52
10. Specify the mirror disk as the alternate boot path in nonvolatile memory:
# setboot –a 0/1/1/0.1.0
11. To add a line to /stand/bootconf for the new boot disk, use vi or another text editor as
follows:
# vi /stand/bootconf
l /dev/dsk/c2t1d0s2
where l denotes LVM.
12. Copy the HP service partition(skip this, if you do not have a service partition):
# dd if=/dev/rdsk/c1t0d1s3 of=/dev/rdsk/c2t1d0s3 bs=1024k &
Note : The previous example recommends running the dd command in the background (by
adding & at the end of the command) if you are not sure the dd command will hang when it does
the read. If the dd command is run in the foreground, Ctrl+C stops the read on the disk.
53
Appendix E: LVM Error Messages
This appendix lists some of the warning and error messages reported b y LVM. For each message, the
cause is listed, and an administrator action is recommended. The appendix is divided into two
sections, one for LVM command errors, and one for the system log file
/var/adm/syslog/syslog.log error messages.
LVM Command Error Messages
All LVM commands
vgcfgbackup: /etc/lvmtab is out of date with the running kernel:
Kernel indicates # disks for "/dev/vgname"; /etc/lvmtab has # disks.
Cannot proceed with backup.
Cause:
The num ber of current and active physical volumes, printed by vgdisplay as Cur PV
and Act PV, are not the same. Cur PV and Act PV must a lways agree for the volume
group. This error also indicates that the /e tc/lvmtab file, which is used to match
physical volumes to a volume group, is out of date with the LVM data structures in
memory and on disk.
Recommended Action:
Try to locate any missing disks. For each of the disk in the volume group, use ioscan
and diskinfo to confirm that the disk is functioning properly.
lvchange
"m": Illegal option.
Cause:
The system does not have HP MirrorDisk/UX installed.
Recommended Action:
Install HP MirrorDisk/UX.
lvextend
lvextend: Not enough physical extents availabl e.
Logical volume "/dev/vgname/lvname" could not be extended.
Failure possibly caused by strict allocation policy
Cause:
There is not enough space in the vol ume group to extend the logical volume to the
requested size. This is typically caus ed by one of three situations:
a. There are not enough free physical extents in the volume group. Run vgdisplay to
confirm the number of available physical extents, and multiply that number by the
extent size to determine the free space in the volume group. For example:
# vgdisplay vg00
--- Volume groups ---
VG Name /dev/vg00
VG Write Access read/write
VG Status available
Max LV 255
Cur LV 10
Open LV 10
54
Max PV 16
Cur PV 1
Act PV 1
Max PE per PV 4350
VGDA 2
PE Size (Mbytes) 4
Total PE 4340
Alloc PE 3740
Free PE 600
Total PVG 0
Total Spare PVs 0
Total Spare PVs in use 0
In this example, the total free space is 600 * 4 MB, or 2400 MB.
b. The logical volume is mirrored with a strict allocation policy, and there are not
enough extents on a separate disk to comply with the allocation policy. To confirm
this, run lvdisplay to determine which disks the logical volume occupies, and then
check whether there is sufficient space on the other disks in the volume group.
c. In a SAN environment, one of the disks was dynamically increased in size. LVM did
not detect the asynchronous change in size.
Recommended Action:
a. Choose a smaller size for the logical volume, or add more disk space to the volume
group.
b. Choose a smaller size for the logical volume, or add more disk space to the volume
group. Alternatively, free up space on an available disk using pvmove.
c. None. LVM does not support dynamic resizing of disks.
Note: When an LVM volume group is created, several configuration parameters are set
(such as max_pe, max_pv, and max_lv). The new vgmodify command enables you to
change these configuration parameters on an existing volume group, which avoids having
to migrate user data. For more information, see vgmodify(1M) and the LVM Volume Group
Dynamic LUN expansion (DLE)/vgmodify whitepaper.
"m": Illegal option.
Cause:
The system does not have HP MirrorDisk/UX installed.
Recommended Action:
Install HP MirrorDisk/UX.
lvlnboot
lvlnboot: Unable to configure swap logical volume. Swap logical volume
size beyond the IODC max address.
Cause:
The boot disk firmware cannot access the entire range of the swap logical volume. This
happens with older host bus adapters when primary swap is configured past 4 GB on the
disk.
Recommended Action:
Upgrade the system firmware or use a newer host bus adapter that supports block
addressing. If neither of these actions is successful, reduce the size of the primary swap
logical volume so that it does not exceed 4 GB.
55
pvchange
"a": Illegal option.
Cause:
LVM OLR is not installed.
Recommended Action:
Install the patches enabling LVM OLR, or use an alternate replac ement procedure.
The HP-UX kernel running on this system does not provide this feature.
Install the appropriate kernel patch to enable it.
Cause:
LVM OLR is not completely installed. Both the LVM command and k ernel components are
required to enable LVM OLR. In this case, the command patch is installed and the kernel
patch is not.
Recommended Action:
Install the appropriate kernel patch to enable LVM OLR, or use an alternate replacement
procedure.
Unable to detach the path or physical volume via the pathname
provided. Either use pvchange(1M) -a N to detach the PV using an
attached path or detach each path to the PV individually using
pvchange(1M) –a n
Cause:
The specified path is not part of any volume group because the path has not been
successfully attached to the otherwise active volume group to wh ich it belongs.
Recommended Action:
Check the specified path name to make sure it is cor rect. If the error occurred while
detaching a physical volume, specify a different path that it was attached to before. If it is
not clear whether any path was attached before, individually detach each path to the
physical volume using pvchange with the –a n option.
Warning: De taching a physical volume reduces the availability of data
within the logical volumes residing on that disk. Prior to detaching a
phy sical volume or the last available path to it, verify that there
are alternate copies of the data available on other disks in the
volume group. If necessa ry, use pvchange(1M) to reverse this
operation.
Cause:
This warning is advisory only and generated whenever a path or physical volume is
detached.
Recommended Action:
None.
vgcfgbackup
Invalid LVMREC on Physical Volume.
Cause:
The LVM header on the disk is incorrect. This can happen when an existing LVM disk is
56
overwritten with a command like dd or pvcreate. If the disk is shared between two
systems, it is likely that one of the systems was not aware that the disk was already in a
volume grou p. The corruption can also be caused by running vgchgid incorrectly when
using BCV split volumes.
Recommended Action:
Restore a known good configuration to the disk using vgcfgrestore. Be sure to use a
valid copy dated before the first occurrence of the problem.
# vgcfgrestore –n vgname pvname
vgcfgrestore
Cannot restore Physical Volume pvname Detach the PV or deactivate the
VG, before restoring the PV.
Cause:
The vgcfgrestore command was used to initialize a disk that already belongs to an
active volume group.
Recommended Action:
Detach the physical volume or deactivate the volume group before attempting to restore
the physical volume. If there is reason to believe that the data on the disk is corrupted, the
disk can be detached and marked using vgcfgrestore then attached again without
replacing the disk. This causes LVM to reinitialize the disk and synchronize any mirrored
user data mapped there.
vgchange
Warning: couldn't query physical volume "pvname":
The specified path does not correspond to physical volume attached to
this volume group
Warning: couldn't query all of the physical volumes.
Cause:
This error has several p ossible causes:
a. The disk was missing when the volume group was activated, but was later restored.
This typically occurs when a system is rebooted or the volume gr oup is activated with
a disk missing, uncabled, or powered down.
b. The disk LVM header was overwritten with the wrong volu me group information. If the
disk is shared between two systems, it is likely that one of the systems was not aware
that the disk was already in a volume group. To co nfirm, check the volume group
informatio n using the dump_lvmtab command, available from your HP support
representative, and look for inconsistencies. For example:
# dump_lvmtab -s | more
SYSTEM : 0x35c8cf58
TIME : 0x3f9acc69 : Sat Oct 25 15:18:01 2003
FILE : /etc/lvmtab
HEADER : version:0x03e8 vgnum:7
VG[00] VGID:35c8cf58 3dd13164 (@0x00040c) pvnum:2 state:0
/dev/vg00
(00) VGID:35c8cf58 3dd13164 PVID:35c8cf58 3dd13164
/dev/dsk/c0t6d0
(01) VGID:35c8cf58 3dd13164 PVID:35c8cf58 3dda4694
/dev/dsk/c4t6d0
VG[01] VGID:065f303f 3e63f01a (@0x001032) pvnum:92 state:0
/dev/vg01
(00) !VGID:35c8cf58 3f8df316 PVID:065f303f 3e63effa
/dev/dsk/c40t0d0
(01) !VGID:35c8cf58 3f8df316 PVID:065f303f 3e63effe
57
/dev/dsk/c40t0d4
(02) !VGID:35c8cf58 3f8df316 PVID:065f303f 3e63f003
/dev/dsk/c40t1d0
…
In this example, note that the volume group ids (VGID) for the disks in /dev/vg01
are not consistent; inconsistencies are marked !VGID.
Recommended Action:
a. Use ioscan and diskinfo to confirm that the disk is func tioning properly. Re-
activate the volume group using the following command:
# vgchange –a y vgname
b. There are several methods of recovery from this error. If you are not familiar with the
commands outlined in the followi ng procedures, contact your HP support
representative for assistance.
1) Restore a known good configuration to the disks using vgcfgrestore. Be
sure to use a valid copy dated before the first occurrence of the problem.
# vgcfgrestore –n vgname pvname
2) Recreate the volume group and its logical volumes, restoring the data from the
most current backup.
3) Export and re-import the volume group using the following commands:
# vgexport -m vgname.map -v -f vgname.file /dev/vgname
# mkdir /dev/vgname
# mknod /dev/vgname/group c 64 unique_minor_number
# vgimport -m vgname.map -v -f vgname.file /dev/vgname
vgchange: Couldn't set the unique id for volume group "/dev/vgname"
Cause:
There are multiple LVM group files with the same minor number.
Recommended Action:
List the LVM group files. If there are any duplicate minor numbers, export one of the
affected volume groups, create a new group file with a unique minor number, and re-
import the volume group. If you are not familiar with the procedure shown here, contact
your HP support representative for assistance:
# ll /dev/*/group
# vgexport -m vgname.map -v -f vgname.file /dev/vgname
# mkdir /dev/vgname
# mknod /dev/vgname/group c 64 unique_minor_number
# vgimport -m vgname.map -v -f vgname.file /dev/vgname
vgc reate
vgcreate: Volume group "/dev/vgname" could not be created:
VGRA for the disk is too big for the specified parameters. Increase
the extent size or decrease max_PVs/max_LVs and try again.
Cause:
The Volume Group Reserved Area at the front of each LVM disk cannot hold all the
information about the disks in this volume group. This error typically occurs if you use
disks larger than 100 GB.
Recommended Action:
Adjust the volume group creation parameters. Use the –s option of the vgextend
command to select an extent size larger than 4 MB, or use the –p option to select a
smaller number of physical volumes. See vgcreate(1M) for information on these
options.
58
vgdisplay
vgdisplay: Couldn't query volume group "/dev/vg00".
Possible error in the Volume Group minor number;
Please check and make sure the group minor number is unique.
vgdisplay: Cannot display volume group "/dev/vg00".
Cause:
This err or has several possible causes:
a. There are multiple LVM group files with the same minor number.
b. Serviceguard was previously installed on the system, and the /dev/slvmvg device
file still exists.
Recommended Action:
a. List the LVM group files. If there are any duplicate minor numbers, export one of the
affected volum e groups, create a new group file with a unique minor number, and re-
import the volume group. If you are not familiar with the following process, contact
your HP support representative for assistance:
# ll /d ev/*/group
# vgexport -m vgname.map -v -f vgname.file /dev/vgname
# mkdir /dev/vgname
# mknod /dev/vgname/group c 64 unique_minor_number
# vgimport -m vgname.map -v -f vgname.file /dev/vgname
b. Remove the /dev/slvmvg device file and recreate the /e tc/lvmtab file with the
fo llowing commands:
# rm /dev/slvmvg
# mv /etc/lvmtab /etc/lvmtab.old
# vgscan –v
Warning: couldn't query physical volume " pvname":
The specified path does not correspond to physical volume attached to
this volume group
Warning: couldn't query all of the physical volumes.
Cause:
This error has several possible causes. They are described earlier under the vgchange
error messages.
Recommended Action:
See the recommended actions under the vgchange error messa ges.
vgextend
vgextend: Not enough physical extents per physical volume.
Need: #, Have: #.
Cause:
The disk size exceeds the volume group maximum disk size. This limitation is defined
when the volume group is created, as a product of the extent size specified with the –s
option of vgcreate and the maximum number of physical extents per disk specified with
the –e option. Typically, the disk is successfully added to the volume group, but all of it is
not accessible.
59
Recommended Action:
The volume group extent size and number of physical extents per disk are not dynamic.
The only way to use the entire disk is to re-create the volume group with new values for
the –s and –e options. Alternatively, you can work with an HP support representative to
adjust the volume group characteristics using the vgmodify command; note that this
utility is currently unsupported and available only from your HP support representative.
vgimport
Verification of unique LVM d isk id on each disk in the volume group
/dev/vgname failed.
Cause:
There are two possible causes for this message:
a. The vgimport command used the –s option, and two or more disks on the system
have the same LVM identifier; this can happen when disks are created with BCV
copy or cloned with dd.
b. LVM was unable to read t he disk header; this can happen when you create new
logical units on a SAN array.
Recommended Action:
a. Do n ot use the –s option to vgimport. Alternatively, use vgchgid to change the
LVM identifiers on copied or cloned disks.
b. Retry the vgimport command. For a long term solution , install patch PHKL_30510
or one of its superseding patches.
Sy slog Error Messages
LVM: VG 64 0x010000: Data in one or more logical volumes on PV 188
0x072000 was lost when the disk was replaced. This occurred because
the disk contained the only copy of the data. Prior to using these
logical volumes, restore the data from backup.
Cause:
LVM cannot synchronize the data on a replaced disk automatically, as when LVM
discove rs an unmirrored logical volume residing on a disk that was just replaced. When
all data on a disk is mirrored elsewhere and a copy is available, LVM automatically
synchronizes the data on the replaced disk from the mirrors of the data on other disks.
Recommended Action:
Restore the contents of the logical volume from backup.
LVM: VG 64 0x010000: PVLink 188 0x072000 Detached.
Cause:
This message is advisory and generated whenever a disk path is detached.
Recommended Action:
None.
60
Appendix F: Moving a Root Disk to a New Disk or Another
Disk
Follow these steps to move root disk /dev/dsk/c1t1d1 (source disk) to disk /dev/dsk/c2t2d2
(destination disk) staying within the same volum e group:
1. To make the destina tion disk a bootable LVM disk, enter:
# pvcreate -f -B /dev/rdsk/c2t2d2
2. To make the disk bootable. Enter:
# mkboot /dev/rdsk/c2t2d2
# mkboot -a "hpux -a (;0)/stand/vmunix" /dev/rdsk/c2t2d2
3. To extend your root volume group with the destination disk, enter:
# vgextend /dev/vg00 /dev/d sk/c2t2d2
4. To move all physical extents from the source disk to the destination disk, enter:
# pvmove /dev/dsk/c1t 1d1 /dev/dsk/c2t2d2
5. To reduce the source disk from the volume group, enter:
# vgreduce /dev/vg0 0 /dev/dsk/c1t1d1
6. To shut down and reboot from the new root disk in maintenance mode, enter:
ISL> hpux -lm (; 0)/stand/vmunix
7. To upda te the BDRA and the LABEL file, enter:
# vgchange -a y /dev/vg00
# lvlnboot -b /dev/vg00/lvol1
# lvlnboot -s /dev/vg00/lvol2
# lvlnboot -r /dev/vg00/lvol3
# lvlnboot -Rv
# vgchange -a n /dev/vg00
8. Reboot the system.
61
Appendix G: Recreating Volume Group Information
There might be situations when the volume group directory, for example vgtest under /dev, is
accidentally removed. In such a situ ation, use the following steps to re-create the vgtest volume
group:
1. To manually create the directory, enter:
# mkdir /dev/vgtest
2. To create the character special file group under /dev/vgtest directory, enter:
# mknod /dev/vgte st/group c 64 0xXX0000
(XX = the minor number for th e group file. This should be unique among
all the volume groups on the system. XX ranges from 00 to ff.)
3. To move the /etc/lvmtab file, enter:
# mv /etc/lvmtab /etc/lvmtab.old
4. To create the new /etc/lvmtab file, enter:
# vgscan –v
5. To import the informa tion from the disk that was removed by accident, enter:
Note: If the system has not been rebooted since the accident, you must do it now.
# vgimport -v /dev/vgtest /dev/dsk/c1t1d1 <and an y other disks>
6. To activate the imported volume group, enter:
# vgchange -a y /dev/vgXX
7. Mount the file systems or just reboot the system.
If you have naming conflicts, remember that you can rename logical volumes, but you must export
and import volume groups for renaming.
62
Appendix H: Disk Relocation and Recovery Using vgexport
and vgimport
Follow these steps to move a volume group /disks from one system (for example, A) to another
system (for example, B):
1. Unmount all of the mounted lvols within the volume group, vgtest , that you are exporting, and
close all of the logical volumes:
# umount /dev/vgte st/lvolX /mount_point_name (repeat for all lvols)
2. To deactivate the volume group vgtest, enter:
# vgchange -a n /dev/vgtest
3. To check the group file minor number and all lvols, enter:
# cd /dev/vgtest
# ll
4. To export the volume group LVM info to the map file, enter:
# vgexport -v -m /tmp/vgtest_map /dev/vgtest
5. Enter the following commands on syste m B to create the volume group director /dev/vgtest
and the character special file group:
# mkdir /dev/vgtest
# mknod /dev/vgtest/group c 64 0xXX0000
(XX = volume group minor number, should be un ique on System B)
6. Import the LVM volume group vgtest onto the system:
# vgimport -v -m /tmp/vgtest_map /dev/vgtest <import_pv1>
<import_pv2> …
Notes:
1. During the vgimport action, the order of physical volumes listed in the /etc/lvmtab file
depends on the order in which the physical volumes are presented on the vgimport command
line. Whenever a bootable volume group is imported, the boot information present in the boot
disks might be incorrect due to the change in the order of imported disks in the /etc/lvmtab
file. This is because the boot information on the boot disks assumes a certain order of disks in
/etc/lvmtab and requires a resynchronization of this information after the first activation of a
newly imported bootable volume group. To resynchronize the information on the boot disk after
the first activation of a newly imported bootable volume group, enter the lvlnboot command in
recovery mode (-R option).
2. Starting with HP-UX 11i v3, while importing a volume group for a given physical volume
belonging to the importing volume group, there exists a persistent device special file (and the
legacy device special files provided the legacy mode is not disabled using the rmsf –L
command).
If you choose to use the new feature introduced by the mass storage subsystem (that supports
multiple paths to a device and allows multiple paths simultaneously), follow these steps:
a. Ensure that the Mass Storage Subsystem multipath behavior is enabled using the
scsimgr command.
b. On the vgimport command line, use the persistent device special file of the physical
volumes to configure the LVM. If you need to configure legacy device files as well for
LVM configuration, you must ensure that the persistent device special file precedes the
corresponding legacy device special files on the vgimport command line. In such
cases, another alternative is to first configure the LVM with persistent device special files
63
using vgimport command, followed by configuring the LVM with legacy device special
files as well using vgextend command.
If you choose to use the traditional LVM behavior on HP-UX 11i v3 as well, follow these steps:
a. Use the scsimgr command to disable the Mass Storage Subsystem multipath behavior.
b. Only the legacy device special files are used in the vgimport command line while
configuring the LVM volume group.
3. Activate the volume group and enter vgdisplay –v /dev/vgtest to see the result:
# vgchange -a y /dev/vgtest
64
Appendix I: Splitting Mirrors to Perform Backups
Make sure the database is not active before you split it. The following exa mple uses
/dev/vg02/lvol1 to show this process. Use lvdisplay -v /dev/vg02/lvol1 to verify that
/dev/vg02/lvol1 is mirrored and current.
1. To split the logical volume, enter:
# sync
# lvsplit -s backup /dev/vg02/lvol1
The system console displays the following message:
Logical volume "/dev/vg02/lvol1backup" has been successfully created
with character device "/dev/vg02/rlvol1backup".
Logical volume "/dev/vg02/lvol1" has been successfully split.
The original logical volume, /dev/vg02/lvol1, continues to be available for use.
The new logical volume, /dev/vg02/lvolbackup, split off from the original, now exists.
2. Enter fsck on the split logical volume:
# fsck /dev/vg02/rlvol1backup
or:
# fsck -F vxfs /dev/vg02/rlvol1backup (for JFS file systems)
3. Perform the backup of the file system:
”/dev/vg02/lvol1backup". (preferred backup utility)
4. When the backup is done, unmount the file system (if you had mounted it) in the split-off logical
volume when you are ready to merge the split pairs.
5. To merge the split-of the logical volume and the original logical volume back into one mirrored
logical volume, enter:
# lvmerge /dev/vg02/lvol1backup /dev/vg02/lvol1
6. To verify the merged mirror, enter:
# lvdisplay -v /dev/vg02/lvol1
65
Appendix J: Moving an Existing Root Disk to a New
Hardware Path
Before you shut down the system, note the /etc/lvmtab contents, an d note which disks are in
vg00. Shut down the system and connect the existing root drive to the new path. Boot up the system
and escape boot sequence, and t hen boot off the root drive at the new hardware path to ISL.
1. To boot into LVM maintenance mode , enter:
ISL> hpux -lm (;0)/stand/vmunix
2. To find the new hardware path of the root disk, enter:
# ioscan -fnC disk
3. To install the special file for the root disk at the new hardware path, enter:
# insf -e -H <hardware_path>
4. To find the special device file for the r oot disk, enter:
# ioscan -fnC disk (example of device file name: /dev/dsk/c2t6d0)
5. Note the minor number of the grou p file in /dev/vg00.
6. To export the root file system vg00 to a mapfile, enter:
# vgexport -v -m /tmp/vg00_map /dev/vg00
7. To create the volume group and the group file to be used for the vgimport command, enter:
# mkdir /dev/vg00
# mknod /dev/vg00/group c 64 0x000000
8. To import the root disk and any other disks that might be in the vg00 volume group, enter:
# vgimport -v -m /tmp/vg00_map /dev/vg00 /dev/dsk/cXtXd0
<and any other disk in vg00>
9. To activate the volume group, enter:
# vgchange -a y /dev/vg00
10. To update the LIF's Label file with the information contained in the BDRA, enter:
# lvlnboot -Rv
11. To reboot the system, enter:
# shutdown -r 0
Note: Do not forget to update the Stable Storage new boot path from the ISL prompt!
66
For more information
To learn more about some of the LVM features, see the following documents on the HP documentation
website:
http://docs.hp.com (Use search with the given name of the whitepaper)
http://www.docs.hp.com/en/oshpux 11iv3#LVM%20Volume%20Manager
• LVM Version 2.0 Volume Groups in HP-UX 11i v3
• SLVM Single-Node Online Reconfiguration (SLVM SNOR)
• LVM Online Disk Replac ement (LVM OLR)
• When Good Disks Go Bad: Dealing with Disk Failures under LVM
• LVM Volume Group Dynamic LUN expansion (DLE)/vgmodify
• LVM Volume Group Quiesce/Resume
• LVM New Features in HP-UX 11i v3
To learn more about configuring LVM and migration of LVM VG configuration from legacy to agile
naming model, see the following documents on HP documentation website:
http://docs.hp.com (Use search with the given name of the whitepaper)
http://www.docs.hp.com/en/oshpux11iv3#LVM%20Volume%20Manager
• LVM Migration from Legacy to Agile Naming Mo del
• HP-UX System Administrato r's Guide: Logical Volume Management
• HP-UX LVM Performance Assessment ( The whitepaper will be available soon)
To learn more about the agile view and the n ew mass storage stack, see the following document on
the HP documentation website:
http://docs.hp.com/en/netsys.html#Storage%20Area%20Management
• The Next Generation Mass Storage Stack
To learn more about supported node and host name sizes on HP-UX, see the following document on
HP documentation website:
http://www.docs.hp.com/en/oshpux11iv3#White%20Papers
Call to Action
HP welc omes your input. Please give us comments about this white paper, or suggestions for LVM or
related documentation, through our technical documentation feedback website:
http://docs.hp.com/en/feedback.html
© 2008 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is
subject to change without notice. The only warranties for HP products and services are set
forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services.
Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. HP shall not
be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein.
5991-1236, 10/2008
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