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VxVM System Administrator's Guide

Recovery

Appendix B


Introduction

The VERITAS Volume Manager provides the ability to protect systems from disk failures and to recover from disk failures. This appendix describes various recovery procedures and provides information to help you prevent loss of data or system access due to disk failures. It also describes possible plex and volume states.

For information specific to volume recovery, refer to Chapter 4.

The following topics are covered in this appendix:

Protecting Your System

Disk failures can cause two types of problems: loss of data on the failed disk and loss of access to your system due to the failure of a key disk (a disk involved with system operation). The VERITAS Volume Manager provides the ability to protect your system from either type of problem.

In order to maintain system availability, the data important to running and booting your system must be mirrored. Furthermore, it must be preserved in such a way that it can be used in case of failure.

The following are some suggestions on how to protect your system and data:

If you use vxassist mirror to create mirrors, it locates the mirrors such that the loss of one disk will not result in a loss of data. By default, vxassist does not create mirrored volumes; you can edit the file /etc/default/vxassist to set the default layout to mirrored. Refer to Chapter 4, "Volume Administration" for information on the vxassist defaults file.

If the root disk is mirrored, hot-relocation can automatically create another mirror of the root disk if the original root disk fails. The rootdg disk group should therefore contain enough contiguous spare or free space to accommodate the volumes on the root disk (rootvol and swapvol volumes require contiguous disk space).

The UNIX Boot Process

The boot process for UNIX depends on the ability of the system hardware to find programs and data necessary to bring the system up. The system boots in several stages, with each successive stage depending on the previous stage. Different combinations of system hardware and disk controllers provide different capabilities for configuring your system, which impact the boot process. Before deciding how to configure your system, it is important to have some understanding of the boot process and how different controllers affect it.

The boot process starts when the system is turned on or reset. The first thing that is run is the Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) initialization routine or some other ROM-based boot code. This routine serves several purposes:

One system administration concern is the configuration of the disks. Intel x86 systems typically conform to the IBM PC BIOS interface, and initially configure four disks for the system: two floppy drives (usually noted as A: and B:) and two hard drives (C: and D:). This configuration is normally kept in non-volatile RAM (NVRAM) on the system, and is configurable through a system-specific interface (some BIOSs have on-board configuration capabilities; others require a system floppy to reconfigure the system). The four disk devices are the disks that are available for use through the BIOS interface - in most cases, these are the only devices available during the early stages of the boot process, until UNIX is actually loaded and running. (Some disk controllers allow access to more than two hard drives during the early stages of booting.)

Once the default configuration is loaded and checked by the system BIOS, the BIOS initialization routine checks to see if any peripherals on the bus have their own BIOS and initialization routines, and if so, it runs them. This allows attached hardware to initialize itself and change the default configuration, if necessary. Many disk controllers have their own BIOS routines and will change the default configuration so that the C: and D: drive entries in the system configuration point to drives that are attached to that controller.

Once all peripheral BIOS routines have run, the system will attempt to boot an operating system from one of the disk devices. It first checks the A: floppy drive to see if a floppy is inserted. If drive A: does not contain a floppy, the BIOS attempts to read and execute a program called fdisk boot from the first block of the drive designated as C:. This program then goes on to read and execute another program from the disk's active partition (which is the UNIX partition) called the UNIX boot program. This program then prepares for the loading of the UNIX operating system, loads UNIX from the /stand file system on the disk, and starts up UNIX. The boot program also passes UNIX some information about the system configuration that will be used during the UNIX part of the boot process.

When UNIX is started, it examines the system and the arguments passed from boot and does its own initialization. It eventually mounts the root file system, sets up the initial swap area, and executes the init program (located in /sbin/init) to bring the system up. init runs the VxVM startup routines that load the complete Volume Manager configuration, check the root file system, etc.

Disk Controller Specifics

As mentioned previously, disk controllers are given the opportunity to change the system configuration for the C: and D: disk locations during the BIOS initialization process. The exact actions taken depend entirely on the controller involved. Some controllers are very simple and just map the first two disks found into C: and D:; more advanced controllers are capable of being configured to use specific devices or to check for failed disks, and if possible, substitute others. The basic function, however, is to point the entry for disk C: in the system BIOS configuration at the disk that should be used for the rest of the boot process (that is, where to find fdisk boot, the UNIX boot program, and the UNIX operating system itself). If no disk is configured as C:, or if that disk does not have the necessary contents for booting UNIX, the boot will fail.

SCSI Controllers

While the specifics of what any controller will do is entirely dependent on the type of the controller, there are some general capabilities that a controller can have that can help the boot process. A basic SCSI controller will map the disk with a SCSI ID of 0 into C: and the disk with a SCSI ID of 1 into D:. Other controllers give the administrator other configuration options and features. While these vary greatly between controllers, it is possible to classify controller features into three groups. These groups are:

Note that some controllers mix the above characteristics. For example, some non-configurable controllers will perform auto-failover. This is usually done by having the controller poll the SCSI bus and map the disk with the lowest SCSI ID into C: and the next lowest SCSI ID into D:. It should be noted that some auto-failover controllers can, at the time of installation, be configured to perform in the simple controller mode. It is essential that the administrator has full knowledge of the capabilities of the controller. Controller-specific information may be found in most user manuals available from the manufacturer.


Note: The mapping policy of a Micro-channel MCA SCSI controller is quite different from the policies explained above; see "Configuring the System" for Micro-channel controller-specific information.


No matter what kind of controller you have, it will attempt to map a disk into C:. This disk is usually referred to as the boot disk, since this is the disk that will be used for the early stages of the boot process. The system will not boot if:

For simple controllers, a bootable disk is normally placed on the controller in such a way that it will be mapped into C: by the controller. (For example, for the Adaptec 1540/1542 B controller, the administrator would be forced to replace the failed SCSI disk 0 with a properly configured disk and change its SCSI ID to 0.) By mirroring the system's boot-critical data to another disk with VxVM, that backup disk can be mapped into C: in case of a primary boot disk failure and can be used to bring up the system.

Unfortunately, rearranging the disks so that the backup boot disk is mapped into C: can mean disconnecting and reconnecting drives, moving jumpers to reorder the disks, etc., which is inconvenient. With some disk controllers, disks other than C: are available for use during the boot process. Even with auto-failover controllers, the system may be unbootable because of a failure later in the boot process (such as an invalid UNIX partition table) that the controller cannot detect.

To avoid having to rearrange the hardware, VxVM supports a special boot floppy that can usually make the system boot from an alternate drive without having to rearrange hardware.

The VxVM Boot Floppy

The VxVM boot floppy gives the administrator the opportunity to designate a disk other than the one mapped to C: for use as the boot disk. This can be very convenient when the disk that is mapped into C: has failed completely or contains stale or corrupt data.

Booting With the VxVM Boot Floppy

When the VxVM boot floppy is inserted in floppy drive A:, the system BIOS will read the fdisk boot and boot programs from the floppy, circumventing data problems on the disk mapped into C:. The boot program on this floppy is slightly different than the normal hard-drive boot program. Once the system has initialized and the floppy boot program is running, the following prompt will appear on the screen:

Enter kernel name [C:unix]: 

The kernel name specified can have two parts: a disk name and a file name. The default (as shown) is to boot unix from the disk mapped into C: (C:unix). You can select an alternate by specifying the disk and/or the kernel by entering the disk identifier and/or the operating system name.


Note: In almost all cases, the kernel name should be unix; booting a different kernel can have negative effects on your system.


Since the operating system name will usually be unix, you can simply enter the disk to be used as the boot disk. For example, entering D: and pressing Return will use the drive mapped into D: (if any exists) as the boot disk.

Creating a VxVM Boot Floppy

The vxmkboot utility is used to create VxVM boot floppies. To do this, place a formatted floppy in the first floppy drive on the system. (See the manual pages for formatting a floppy and floppy devices.) The boot image is placed on the floppy by issuing the following command at a shell prompt:

/etc/vx/bin/vxmkboot

If successful, the command will display the following:

xx+0 records in 
xx+0 records out 

where xx is a number indicating the size of the boot program. If a failure occurs, an error message describing the error will be printed and a message will be displayed indicating that the VxVM boot floppy creation failed.

After VxVM is installed, you should create several boot floppies and keep these in a safe place.


Note: The program for creating the boot floppies exists on the system. If the system fails, no floppies can be created. Unless a boot floppy has already been made, none will be available to help you boot and recover the system.

The boot floppy can help recover the system by booting from a boot mirror. It is therefore important to mirror the boot disk (using vxdiskadm).


Configuring the System

The best way to configure your system to remain available when boot-critical data or disks are lost depends on the characteristics of the disk controller on your system. It is recommended that you mirror your boot disk to another disk that will be available during the early boot process in case the normal boot disk becomes unavailable. If the system is using an auto-failover disk controller, the system should be configured such that the controller will choose the backup boot disk to map to C: If the controller decides the normal boot disk has failed, the system will automatically use a backup disk and therefore reboot without manual intervention in the case of boot disk failures that are detected by the controller.

This section provides suggestions for system configurations for the three types of controllers described previously.

Simple Controllers

Using simple controllers, it is impossible to avoid hardware reconfiguration in case of a failed disk with SCSI ID 0.

If disk 0 does not respond on the bus, the controller will not map any disk into C: or D:, making the system totally unbootable, even with the VxVM boot floppy. It always attempts to map SCSI disk 0 into C: and SCSI disk 1 into D:, and these are the only disks available during the system boot. Therefore, the best possible configuration is to use vxrootmir to mirror the boot disk to the disk with SCSI ID 1. This allows you to boot using the VxVM boot floppy in the case of data failure on the boot disk. Adaptec 1540/1542 B and WD7000 are examples of simple controllers.

Configurable Controllers

Configurable controllers give you the ability to remap the C: and D: drives. Hence, a suggested configuration could be to use vxrootmir to mirror the boot disk onto another available disk, and in case of a failure on the disk mapped to C:, remap the mirrored boot disk to C: and reboot the system. Such remapping typically requires a system floppy provided by the manufacturer of the controller. An example of a configurable controller is Adaptec 1542 C.

Auto-failover Controllers

At system boot, a controller with auto-failover capabilities searches a series of disk devices until it finds one that is available. The search pattern is SCSI ID 0, SCSI ID 1, and if these fail and a second controller is attached, SCSI ID 0, SCSI ID 1 on the second controller. Note that it will never configure disks from separate controllers together as C: and D:(for example, if controller 1 disk 0 fails, it will map controller 1 disk 1 into C: and nothing from the second controller into D:).

The best choice for configuring a system in this case is to mirror the boot disk (SCSI ID 0 on the first controller) to SCSI ID 1 on the first controller. If multiple controllers are available, it is also possible to mirror the boot disk to SCSI ID 0 on the second controller. This gives you the ability to have the system failover automatically, even if all disks on the first controller become unavailable (for reasons such as cable/terminator failure or an electronic failure on the controller itself). The above applies only in the case where all the controllers attached to the system are auto-failover controllers. Examples of auto-failover controllers are Adaptec 1742/1744 and DPT 2012B controllers.

Micro-channel (MCA) SCSI Adapter

The behavior of the MCA SCSI disk controller is quite different from the ones explained earlier. An MCA controller attempts to map the disk with ID 6 to C:, if such a disk exists. Among other disks, the disk with the lowest ID is mapped to D:. In the absence of a disk with ID 6, the controller maps the disk with the highest ID to C:, and the disk with the next highest ID to D:. It should be noted that if a disk with ID 6 is present and fails due to an electronic or media failure error, the controller will not auto-failover to D:. The VxVM boot floppy should be used in order to boot from the desired disk.

Booting After Failures

While there are many types of failures that can prevent a system from booting (even with auto-failover controllers), the same basic procedure can be followed to bring the system up. When a system fails to boot, you should first try to identify the failure by the evidence left on the screen, and repair it if possible (for example, turn on a drive that was accidentally powered off). If the problem cannot be repaired (such as data errors on the boot disk), boot the system from an alternate boot disk (containing a mirror of the root volume) so that the damage can be repaired or the failing disk can be replaced.

If the controller fails to map any disks when the regular boot disk fails, rearrange the physical disk devices so that the alternate boot disk is mapped into C:. If the controller has auto-failover capabilities, the system may manage to boot itself despite the errors. You will usually find out about the failure via mail received from the Volume Manager when it notices the failure.

If the controller does not have auto-failover capabilities or if the failure was not detectable by the controller, the drive being mapped into C: by the controller is incapable of booting the system. The easiest way to boot the system in this situation is to boot using the VxVM boot floppy to specify an alternate boot disk besides the one mapped into C:.

To boot with the VxVM boot floppy, place the floppy in floppy drive A: and power up the machine. After the system initialization, you should see the following on the screen:

Booting SCO UnixWare... 
Entering BOOT interactive session... [? for help]
[boot]# 

You should now enter the keyword DISK= followed by the letter corresponding to the alternate boot disk (see the boot(4) manual page for more information on boot keywords). The letter will depend on your configuration, as well as any auto-failover procedures taken by the controller. For example, with a simple controller, the system has probably been configured so that the disk mapped into D: is the alternate disk. In this case, you would enter DISK=D: at the first [boot]# prompt and go at the next [boot]# prompt to boot the system from the alternate disk.

Note that auto-failover controllers can confuse the drive mappings. For example, consider a three-disk system that has a simple auto-failover controller which maps the two disks with the lowest SCSI IDs into C: and D:. Normally, the disk with SCSI ID 0 is mapped into C: and the disk with SCSI ID 1 is mapped into D:. If the first has failed completely, the controller maps the disk with SCSI ID 1 into C: and the disk with SCSI ID 2 into D:. If the system still fails to boot off C: (SCSI disk 1) and the boot disk is also mirrored to SCSI disk 2, you would specify DISK= D: to boot off the third disk on the system. If the disk specified to the VxVM boot floppy is not a valid boot disk, the boot program will print an error. For example, if you specify a disk that does not exist, the screen will show:

get_hdfs: Can't get hard disk driver parameters

In this case, you should recheck the drive configuration and specify a different disk at the [boot]# prompt.

Most controllers that auto-failover will output diagnostics describing the kind of failure and the mapping being done. For example, the Adaptec 1740 family of controllers provides output as shown below if the SCSI disk 0 fails to respond on the bus during the controller BIOS initialization:

Adaptec AHA-1740 BIOS vX.XX Copyright 1992, Adaptec Inc. 
[ Standard Mode ] Target 0 - Device Not Found Target 1 - Drive C: (80h) 

The screen clears soon after this message appears.

Failures and Recovery Procedures

As mentioned earlier, there are several possible failures that can cause the system to fail to boot. This section outlines some of the possible failures and gives instructions on how to correct the problems.

Failures Finding the Boot Disk

Early in the boot process, immediately following system initialization, the screen might display something like this (this message screen varies widely between systems):

NO ROM BASIC 
SYSTEM HALTED 

This means that the system BIOS was unable to read the fdisk boot program from the boot drive. This can occur if no disk was mapped into C: by the controller, if the SCSI bus has locked up, or if the drive mapped into C: has no fdisk boot program on it.

Common causes for this problem are:

The first step in diagnosing this problem is to check carefully that everything on the SCSI bus is in order. If disks are powered off or the bus is unterminated, correct the problem and reboot the system. If one of the disks has failed, remove the disk from the bus and replace it.

If no hardware problems are found, the error is probably due to data errors on the disk mapped into C:. In order to repair this problem, attempt to boot the system from an alternate boot disk. If your controller allows you to use the boot floppy and you are unable to boot from an alternate boot disk, there is still some type of hardware problem. Similarly, if swapping the failed boot disk with an alternate boot disk fails to allow the system to boot, this also indicates a hardware problem.

Invalid fdisk Partition Data

The fdisk partition on a disk determines the disk partition from which the boot program should be read. (See the hd(7) and fdisk(1M) manual pages for more information on disk partitioning and fdisk.)

Normally, the boot disk will have one UNIX partition that is marked as active. If the fdisk boot program cannot find an active partition to boot from, it will display the following message:

Invalid Partition Table 

The most likely reasons for this problem are:

Boot the system from the alternate boot disk, then use fdisk to look at the fdisk partitions. If the UNIX partition is not marked active, mark it active and save the changes. After you have marked the UNIX partition as active, try rebooting the system from the disk.

If there is no UNIX partition, you must re-add the disk. Refer to "Re-adding a Failed Boot Disk" for details.

Failure to Load the boot Program

If the boot program fails to load or start execution properly, the system will display:

Missing operating system 

This can occur if:

If the disk has not completely failed, it is likely that the boot program on the disk was corrupted by a transient disk error, or was perhaps accidentally overwritten. If this is the case, an attempt can be made to rewrite the boot program to disk using the command:

/etc/vx/bin/vxbootsetup disk01 

If this command fails, or if the console shows errors writing to the device, the disk should be replaced as described in "Replacing a Failed Boot Disk." If this command completes, but you continue to have problems with the drive, consider replacing it anyway.

Failures in UNIX Partitioning

Once the boot program has loaded, it will attempt to access the boot disk through the normal UNIX partition information. If this information is damaged, the boot program will fail with the following error:

boot: No file system to boot from 

If this message appears during the boot, the system should be booted from an alternate boot disk. While booting, most disk drivers will display errors on the console about the invalid UNIX partition information on the failing disk. The messages will look similar to this:

WARNING: Disk Driver: HA 0 TC 0 UNIX 0, Invalid disk VTOC

This indicates that the failure was due to an invalid disk partition. You can attempt to re-add the disk as described in "Re-adding a Failed Boot Disk." However, if the reattach fails, the disk will need to be replaced as described in "Replacing a Failed Boot Disk"."

Failure to Find Files in /stand

Once the boot program has found a valid UNIX partition table, it will attempt to read and execute several files in the /stand file system. If it has any problem finding these files, it will display a message similar to:

boot: Cannot load file: file not found 

where file can be one of /etc/initprog/sip, /etc/initprog/mip, or unix.

The possible causes for these failures are:

If one of these files has been removed from the file system (and therefore is removed in all copies of the /stand file system), the system is unbootable and irrecoverable; the system will need to be reinstalled. See "Reinstallation Recovery."

If the failure is due to data errors in the /stand file system, the system can be booted from an alternate boot disk to investigate the problem. When the system boots, VxVM will notice errors on the stand volume and detach the mirror of the stand volume that resides on the failing boot disk. If the errors are correctable, VxVM will attempt to correct them, and if successful, the disk can continue to be used; otherwise, the disk should be replaced as described in "Replacing a Failed Boot Disk." To determine if the errors were corrected, print information about the stand volume by issuing the command:

vxprint -tph -e 'assoc=="standvol"' 

For example, if the failing boot disk is named disk01 and the alternate disk is named disk02, the output from vxprint should resemble the following:

PL NAME	        VOLUME     KSTATE   STATE    LENGTH LAYOUT   NCOL/WID  MODE
SD NAME	        PLEX       DISK     DISKOFFS LENGTH COL/]OFF DEVICE    MODE
 
pl standvol-01 standvol    DETACHED STALE    32768  CONCAT   -         RW 
sd disk01-01   standvol-01 0        0        32768  0        c0b0t0d0  RW
pl standvol-02 standvol    ENABLED  ACTIVE   32768  CONCAT    -        RW 
sd disk02-03   standvol-02 0        0        32768  disk01   c0b0t1d0  RW

Note that the first mirror, standvol-01, has a kernel state (KSTATE) of DETACHED and a state of STALE. This is because the failures on the disk on which it resides, disk01, caused VxVM to remove the plex from active use in the volume. You can attempt to once again correct the errors by resynchronizing the failed mirror with the volume by issuing the command:

vxrecover standvol

If the Volume Manager fails to correct the error, the disk driver will print notices of the disk failure to the system console and the vxrecover utility will print an error message. If this occurs, the disk has persistent failures and should be replaced.

If the failure is due to the lack of a /stand slice, the system will boot normally and the vxprint command above will show all plexes with a KSTATE of ENABLED and a state of ACTIVE. The vxbootsetup utility can be used to attempt to fix this. For example, if the failed disk is disk01, then the command:

/etc/vx/bin/vxbootsetup disk01

will attempt to correct the partitioning problems on the disk. If this command fails, the disk will need to be replaced as described in "Replacing a Failed Boot Disk."

Missing root or swap Partitions

During the later stages of the boot process, the UNIX kernel will access the root and swap volumes. During this time, VxVM expects to be able to access the mirrors of these volumes on the boot disk as UNIX slices. If either of these slices is missing due to administrator error or corruption of the UNIX partition table, the VxVM module in the kernel will be unable to configure the root or swap volume and will print an error message. For example, if the root partition is missing from the boot disk, the following message will appear:

WARNING: vxvm: Can't open disk ROOTDISK in group ROOTDG.

If it is removable media (such as a floppy), it may not be mounted or ready. Otherwise, there may be problems with the drive.

Kernel error code 19 WARNING: root.c: failed to open disk ROOTDISK,
error 19. WARNING: root.c: failed to set up the root disk, error
19. PANIC: vfs_mountroot: cannot mount root 

If this problem (or the corresponding problem involving the swap area) occurs, boot the system from an alternate boot disk and use the vxbootsetup utility (as described above) to attempt to recreate the needed partitions. If this command fails, the failed disk will need to be replaced as described in "Replacing a Failed Boot Disk."

Stale or Unusable Plexes on Boot Disk

If a disk is unavailable when the system is running, any mirrors of volumes that reside on that disk will become stale, meaning the data on that disk is out of date relative to the other mirrors of the volume. During the boot process, the system accesses only one copy of the root and stand volumes (the copies on the boot disk) until a complete configuration for those volumes can be obtained. If the mirror of one of these volumes that was used for booting is stale, the system must be rebooted from an alternate boot disk that contains non-stale mirrors. This problem can occur, for example, if the system has an auto-failover controller and was booted with the original boot drive turned off. The system will boot normally, but the mirrors that reside on the unpowered disk will be stale. If the system reboots with the drive turned back on, the system will boot using those stale plexes.

Another possible problem can occur if errors in the VxVM headers on the boot disk prevent VxVM from properly identifying the disk. In this case, VxVM will not be able to determine the name of that disk. This is a problem because mirrors are associated with disk names, and therefore, any mirrors on that disk are unusable.

If either of these situations occurs, the VxVM utility vxconfigd will notice the problem when it is configuring the system as part of the init processing of the boot sequence. vxconfigd will display a message describing the error, describe what can be done about it, and halt the system.

vxvm:vxconfigd: ERROR: enable failed: Error in disk group configuration copies
     No valid disk found containing disk group; transactions are disabled.
vxvm:vxconfigd: FATAL ERROR: Rootdg cannot be imported during boot

Errors were encountered in starting the root disk group, as a result
the Volume Manager is unable to configure the root volume, which
contains your root file system.  The system will be halted because
the Volume Manager cannot continue.

You will need to do one of the following:

a)  Boot to a floppy and fix your /dev/rroot to no longer be a volume,
    and then boot a kernel that was not configured to use a volume for
    the root file system.

b)  Re-install your system from the original operating system package.

Once the system has booted, the exact problem needs to be determined. If the mirrors on the boot disk were simply stale, they will be caught up automatically as the system comes up. If, on the other hand, there was a problem with the private area on the disk, you will need to re-add or replace the disk.

If the mirrors on the boot disk were unavailable, you should get mail from the VxVM utilities describing the problem. Another way to discover the problem is by listing the disks with the vxdisk utility. For example, if the problem is a failure in the private area of disk01 (such as due to media failures or accidentally overwriting the VxVM private region on the disk), the command vxdisk list might show the following output:

DEVICE 		TYPE 		DISK 	GROUP		 	STATUS 
- 		- 		disk01 	rootdg 			failed was: c0b0t0d0s0 

Hot-Relocation and Boot Disk Failures

If the boot (root) disk is mirrored and it experiences a failure, hot-relocation automatically attempts to replace the failed root disk mirror with a new mirror. To do this, hot-relocation uses a surviving mirror of the root disk to create a new mirror on either a spare disk or a disk with sufficient free space. This ensures that there are always at least two mirrors of the root disk that can be used for booting. The hot-relocation daemon also calls the vxbootsetup utility, which configures the disk with the new mirror as a bootable disk.

Hot-relocation may fail for a root disk if the rootdg disk group does not contain sufficient spare or free space to accommodate the volumes from the failed root disk. The rootvol and swapvol volumes require contiguous disk space. If the root volume and other volumes on the failed root disk cannot be relocated to the same new disk, each of these volumes can be relocated to a different disk. Mirrors of rootvol and swapvol volumes must be cylinder-aligned, so they can only be created on disks with enough space to allow their subdisks to begin and end on cylinder boundaries; hot-relocation will fail if such disks are not available.

Re-Adding and Replacing Boot Disks

Normally, replacing a failed disk is as simple as putting a new disk somewhere on the controller and running the VxVM replace disk commands (using vxdiskadm). Data that is not critical for booting the system is only accessed by the Volume Manager after the system is fully operational, so it doesn't matter where that data is located -- the Volume Manager can find it. However, boot-critical data must be placed in specific areas on the bootable disks in order for the boot process to find it. The controller-specific configuration actions performed by the disk controller involved in the process and the system BIOS constrain the location of this data. Therefore, the process of replacing a boot disk is slightly more complex.

When a disk fails, there are two possible routes that can be taken to correct the problem:

The following sections describe how to re-add or replace a failed boot disk.

Re-adding a Failed Boot Disk

Re-adding a disk is actually the same procedure as replacing the disk, except that the same physical disk is used. Normally, a disk that needs to be re-added has been detached, meaning that VxVM has noticed that the disk has failed and has ceased to access it. For example, consider a system that has two disks, disk01 and disk02, which are normally mapped into the system configuration during boot as disks C: and D:, respectively. A failure has caused disk01 to become detached. This can be confirmed by listing the disks with the vxdisk utility, as in:

vxdisk list 

This would result in the following output:

	DEVICE       TYPE      DISK      GROUP      STATUS 
	c0b0t0d0s0    sliced    -         -         error 
	c0b0t1d0s0    sliced   disk02    rootdg     online 
 	-             -       disk01    rootdg     failed was:c0b0t0d0s0 

Notice that the disk disk01 has no device associated with it, and has a status of failed with an indication of the device that it was detached from. It is also possible that the device c0b0t0d0s0 would not be listed at all; this would occur if the disk failed totally and the disk controller did not notice it on the bus.

In some cases, the vxdisk list output may differ. For example, if the boot disk has uncorrectable failures associated with the UNIX partition table (such as a missing root partition that cannot be corrected), but no errors in the VxVM private area, the output of the vxdisk list command resembles the following:

DEVICE        TYPE      DISK      GROUP      STATUS 
c0b0t0d0s0    sliced    disk01    rootdg     online 
c0b0t1d0s0    sliced    disk02    rootdg     online 

However, because the error was not correctable by the described procedures, the disk is still deemed to have failed. In this case, it is necessary to detach the failing disk from its device manually. This is done using the "Remove a disk for replacement" function of the vxdiskadm utility (see the vxdiskadm(1M) manual page or the VERITAS Volume Manager User's Guide for more information about vxdiskadm). Once the disk is detached from the device, any special procedures for correcting the problem can be followed (such as reformatting the device).

To re-add the disk, use the "Replace a failed or removed disk" function of the vxdiskadm utility to replace the disk, and select the same device as the replacement. In the above examples, this would mean replacing disk01 with the device c0b0t0d0s0.

If hot-relocation is enabled when a mirrored boot disk fails, it will attempt to create a new mirror and remove the failed subdisks from the failing boot disk. If a re-add succeeds after a successful hot-relocation, the root and/or other volumes affected by the disk failure will no longer exist on the re-added disk. However, the re-added disk can still be used for other purposes.

If a re-add of the disk fails, the disk should be replaced.

Replacing a Failed Boot Disk

When a boot disk needs to be replaced, the system should first be booted off an alternate boot disk. If the failing disk is not detached from its device, it should be manually detached using the "Remove a disk for replacement" function of vxdiskadm (see the vxdiskadm(1M) manual page or the VERITAS Volume Manager User's Guide for more information about vxdiskadm). Once the disk is detached, the system should be shut down and the hardware replaced.

The replacement disk should have at least as much storage capacity as was in use on the disk being replaced. The replacement disk should be large enough so that the region of the disk for storing subdisks can accommodate all subdisks of the original disk at their current disk offsets. To determine the minimum size of a replacement disk, you need to determine how much space was in use on the disk that failed.

To approximate the size of the replacement disk, use the command:

vxprint -st -e 'sd_disk="diskname"'

From the resulting output, add the values under the DISKOFFS and LENGTH columns for the last subdisk listed. The total is in 512-byte multiples. Divide the sum by 2 for the total in kilobytes.


Note: Disk sizes reported by manufacturers do not usually represent usable capacity. Also, some manufacturers report millions of bytes rather than megabytes, which are not equivalent.


Once a replacement disk has been found, shut down the machine cleanly and replace the necessary hardware. When the hardware replacement is complete, boot the system and use vxdiskadm's "Replace a failed or removed disk" function to replace the failing disk with the new device that was just added.

Reattaching Disks

A disk reattach operation may be appropriate if a disk has experienced a full failure and hot-relocation is not possible, or if the Volume Manager is started with some disk drivers unloaded and unloadable (causing disks to enter the failed state). If the problem is fixed, it may be possible to use the vxreattach command to reattach the disks without plexes being flagged as stale, as long as the reattach happens before any volumes on the disk are started.

The vxreattach command is called as part of disk recovery from the vxdiskadm menus and during the boot process. If possible, vxreattach will reattach the failed disk media record to the disk with the same device name in the disk group in which it was located before and will retain its original disk media name. After a reattach takes place, recovery may or may not be necessary. The reattach may fail if the original (or another) cause for the disk failure still exists.

The command vxreattach -c checks whether a reattach is possible, but does not actually perform the operation. Instead, it displays the disk group and disk media name where the disk can be reattached.

Refer to the vxreattach(1M) manual page for more information on the vxreattach command.

Reinstallation Recovery

Occasionally, your system may need to be reinstalled after some types of failures. Reinstallation is necessary if all copies of your root (boot) disk are damaged, or if certain critical files are lost due to file system damage. When a failure of either of these types occurs, you must reinstall the entire system, unless you have backed up your system using the SCO UnixWare Disaster Recovery Feature (DRF). If you created disaster recovery diskettes and tapes after ODM was installed and VxVM was configured, follow the guidelines outlined in the "Recovering Your System" chapter of the SCO UnixWare Installation Handbook.

If these types of failures occur, you should attempt to preserve as much of the original Volume Manager configuration as possible. Any volumes not directly involved in the failure may be saved. You do not have to reconfigure any volumes that are preserved.

This section describes the procedures used to reinstall VxVM and preserve as much of the original configuration as possible after a failure.

General Reinstallation Information

System reinstallation completely destroys the contents of any disks that are reinstalled. Any VxVM related information, such as data in the VxVM private areas on removed disks (containing the disk identifier and copies of the VxVM configuration), is removed during reinstallation. The removal of this information makes the disk unusable as a VxVM disk.

The system root disk is always involved in reinstallation. Other disks may also be involved. If the root disk was placed under Volume Manager control (either during Volume Manager installation or by later encapsulation), that disk and any volumes or mirrors on it are lost during reinstallation. In addition, any other disks that are involved in the reinstallation (or that are removed and replaced) may lose Volume Manager configuration data (including volumes and mirrors).

If a disk (including the root disk) is not under Volume Manager control prior to the failure, no Volume Manager configuration data is lost at reinstallation. Any other disks to be replaced can be replaced by following the procedures in the VERITAS Volume Manager User's Guide. Although it simplifies the recovery process after reinstallation, not having the root disk under Volume Manager control increases the likelihood of a reinstallation being necessary. By having the root disk under VxVM control and creating mirrors of the root disk contents, you can eliminate many of the problems that require system reinstallation.

When reinstallation is necessary, the only volumes saved are those that reside on, or have copies on, disks that are not directly involved with the failure and reinstallation. Any volumes on the root disk and other disks involved with the failure and/or reinstallation are lost during reinstallation. If backup copies of these volumes are available, the volumes can be restored after reinstallation. The exceptions are the root, stand, and usr file systems, which cannot be restored from backup.

Reinstallation and Reconfiguration Procedures

To reinstall the system and recover the VxVM configuration, perform the following procedure (these steps are described in detail in the sections that follow):

1. Prepare the system for installation.

This includes replacing any failed disks or other hardware, and detaching any disks not involved in the reinstallation.

2. Install the operating system.

Do this by reinstalling the base system and any other non VxVM packages.

3. Install VxVM.

Add the VxVM package, but do not execute the vxinstall command.

4. Recover the VxVM configuration.

5. Clean up the VxVM configuration.

This includes restoring any information in volumes affected by the failure or reinstallation, and recreating system volumes (rootvol, swapvol, etc.).

Preparing the System for Reinstallation

To prevent the loss of data on disks not involved in the reinstallation, you should only involve the root disk in the reinstallation procedure.


Note: Several of the automatic options for installation access disks other than the root disk without requiring confirmation from the administrator. Therefore, it is advised that you disconnect all other disks (containing volumes) from the system prior to reinstalling the operating system.


Disconnecting the other disks ensures that they are unaffected by the reinstallation. For example, if the operating system was originally installed with a home file system on the second disk, it may still be recoverable. Removing the second disk ensures that the home file system remains intact.

Reinstalling the Operating System

Once any failed or failing disks have been replaced and disks not involved with the reinstallation have been detached, reinstall the operating system (as described in your operating system documentation). Install the operating system prior to installing VxVM.

While the operating system installation progresses, make sure no disks other than the root disk are accessed in any way. If anything is written on a disk other than the root disk, the Volume Manager configuration on that disk could be destroyed.


Note: During reinstallation, you may have the opportunity to change the host name. It is recommended that you keep the existing host name, as the sections that follow assume that you have not changed your host name.


Reinstalling the Volume Manager

The installation of the Volume Manager has two parts:

To reinstall the Volume Manager, use the pkgadd command to add the package from the CD-ROM.


Note: If you wish to reconstruct the Volume Manager configuration left on the non-root disks, do not initialize the Volume Manager (using vxinstall) after the reinstallation.


Recovering the Volume Manager Configuration

Once the VxVM package has been loaded, recover the Volume Manager configuration by doing the following:

1. Shut down the system.

2. Reattach the disks that were removed from the system.

3. Reboot the system.

4. When the system comes up, bring the system to single-user mode by entering the following command:

	shutdown -g0 -iS -y

5. When prompted to do so, enter the password and press Return to continue.

6. Remove files involved with installation that were created when you loaded VxVM but are no longer needed. To do this, enter the command:

	rm -rf /etc/vx/reconfig.d/state.d/install-db

7. Once these files are removed, you should start some VxVM I/O daemons. Start the daemons by entering the command:

	vxiod set 10

8. Start the Volume Manager configuration daemon, vxconfigd, in disabled mode by entering the command:

	vxconfigd -m disable

9. Initialize the vxconfigd daemon by entering:

	vxdctl init 
10. Enable vxconfigd by entering:

	vxdctl enable

The configuration preserved on the disks not involved with the reinstallation has now been recovered. However, because the root disk has been reinstalled, it appears to the Volume Manager as a non VxVM disk. Therefore, the configuration of the preserved disks does not include the root disk as part of the VxVM configuration.

If the root disk of your system and any other disks involved in the reinstallation were not under Volume Manager control at the time of failure and reinstallation, then the reconfiguration is complete at this point. If any other disks containing volumes or mirrors are to be replaced, follow the replacement procedures in the VERITAS Volume Manager User's Guide. There are several methods available to replace a disk; choose the method that you prefer.

If the root disk (or another disk) was involved with the reinstallation, any volumes or mirrors on that disk (or other disks no longer attached to the system) are now inaccessible. If a volume had only one plex (contained on a disk that was reinstalled, removed, or replaced), then the data in that volume is lost and must be restored from backup. In addition, the system's root file system, swap area, and stand area are not located on volumes any longer. To correct these problems, follow the instructions in "Configuration Cleanup."

Configuration Cleanup

The following sections describe how to clean up the configuration of your system after reinstallation of the Volume Manager.

The following types of cleanup are described:

These sections are followed by reconfiguration information:

Rootability Cleanup

To begin the cleanup of the Volume Manager configuration, remove any volumes associated with rootability. This must be done if the root disk was under Volume Manager control. The volumes to remove are:

To remove the root volume, use the vxedit command, as follows:

vxedit -fr rm rootvol

Repeat this command, using swapvol and standvol in place of rootvol, to remove the swap and stand volumes.

Volume Cleanup

After completing the rootability cleanup, you must determine which volumes need to be restored from backup. The volumes to be restored include those with all mirrors (all copies of the volume) residing on disks that have been reinstalled or removed. These volumes are invalid and must be removed, recreated, and restored from backup. If only some mirrors of a volume exist on reinitialized or removed disks, these mirrors must be removed. The mirrors can be re-added later.

To restore the volumes, do the following:

1. Establish which VM disks have been removed or reinstalled by entering the command:

	vxdisk list

The Volume Manager displays a list of system disk devices and the status of these devices. For example, for a reinstalled system with three disks and a reinstalled root disk, the output of the vxdisk list command is similar to this:


  DEVICE          TYPE      DISK      GROUP     STATUS
  c0b0t0d0s0      sliced    -         -         error
  c0b0t1d0s0      sliced    disk02    rootdg    online
  c0b0t2d0s0      sliced    disk03    rootdg    online
  -               -         disk01    rootdg failed was: c0b0t0d0s0 

The display shows that the reinstalled root device, c0b0t0d0, is not associated with a VM disk and is marked with a status of error. disk02 and disk03 were not involved in the reinstallation and are recognized by the Volume Manager and associated with their devices (c0b0t1d0s0 and c0b0t2d0s0). The former disk01, which was the VM disk associated with the replaced disk device, is no longer associated with the device (c0b0t0d0s0).

If other disks (with volumes or mirrors on them) had been removed or replaced during reinstallation, those disks would also have a disk device listed in error state and a VM disk listed as not associated with a device.

2. Once you know which disks have been removed or replaced, locate all the mirrors on failed disks. Enter the command:

	vxprint -sF "%vname" -e'sd_disk = "disk"'

where disk is the name of a disk with a failed status. Be sure to enclose the disk name in quotes in the command. Otherwise, the command will return an error message. The vxprint command returns a list of volumes that have mirrors on the failed disk. Repeat this command for every disk with a failed status.

3. Check the status of each volume. To print volume information, enter:

	vxprint -th volume_name 
where volume_name is the name of the volume to be examined. The vxprint command displays the status of the volume, its plexes, and the portions of disks that make up those plexes. For example, a volume named v01 with only one plex resides on the reinstalled disk named disk01. The vxprint -th v01 command produces the following display:

V  NAME       USETYPE   KSTATE   STATE    LENGTH   READPOL   PREFPLEX 
PL NAME       VOLUME    KSTATE   STATE    LENGTH   LAYOUT    NCOL/WID   MODE
SD NAME       PLEX      DISK     DISKOFFS LENGTH   [COL/]OFF DEVICE     MODE

v  v01        fsgen     DISABLED ACTIVE   24000    SELECT     -
pl v01-01     v01       DISABLED NODEVICE 24000    CONCAT     -         RW 
sd disk01-06  v01-01    disk01   245759   24000    0          c1b0t5d1  ENA 

The only plex of the volume is shown in the line beginning with pl. The STATE field for the plex named v01-01 is NODEVICE. The plex has space on a disk that has been replaced, removed, or reinstalled. Therefore, the plex is no longer valid and must be removed.

Since v01-01 was the only plex of the volume, the volume contents are irrecoverable except by restoring the volume from a backup. The volume must also be removed. If a backup copy of the volume exists, you can restore the volume later. Keep a record of the volume name and its length, as you will need it for the backup procedure.

4. To remove the volume v01, use the vxedit command:

	vxedit -r rm v01 

It is possible that only part of a plex is located on the failed disk. If the volume has a striped plex associated with it, the volume is divided between several disks. For example, the volume named v02 has one striped plex striped across three disks, one of which is the reinstalled disk disk01. The output of the vxprint -th v02 command returns:

V  NAME       USETYPE   KSTATE   STATE    LENGTH   READPOL   PREFPLEX 
PL NAME       VOLUME    KSTATE   STATE    LENGTH   LAYOUT    NCOL/WID    MODE
SD NAME       PLEX      DISK     DISKOFFS LENGTH   [COL/]OFF DEVICE      MODE

v  v02        fsgen     DISABLED ACTIVE   10240     SELECT    -
pl v02-01     v02       DISABLED NODEVICE 10240     STRIPE    -          RW 
sd disk02-02  v02-01    disk02   424144   10240     0         c1b0t2d0   ENA 
sd disk01-05  v02-01    disk01   620544   10240     0         c1b0t2d1   DIS
sd disk03-01  v02-01    disk03   620544   10240     0         c1b0t2d2   ENA 

The display shows three disks, across which the plex v02-01 is striped (the lines starting with sd represent the stripes). One of the stripe areas is located on a failed disk. This disk is no longer valid, so the plex named v02-01 has a state of NODEVICE. Since this is the only plex of the volume, the volume is invalid and must be removed. If a copy of v02 exists on the backup media, it can be restored later. Keep a record of the volume name and length of any volume you intend to restore from backup.

5. Use the vxedit command to remove the volume, as described earlier.

A volume that has one mirror on a failed disk may also have other mirrors on disks that are still valid. In this case, the volume does not need to be restored from backup, since the data is still valid on the valid disks.

The output of the vxprint -th command for a volume with one plex on a failed disk (disk01) and another plex on a valid disk (disk02) would look like this:


V  NAME       USETYPE   KSTATE   STATE    LENGTH   READPOL     PREFPLEX 
PL NAME       VOLUME    KSTATE   STATE    LENGTH   LAYOUT      NCOL/WID   MODE
SD NAME       PLEX      DISK     DISKOFFS LENGTH   [COL/]OFF   DEVICE     MODE

v  v03        fsgen     DISABLED ACTIVE   30720     SELECT    -
pl v03-01     v03       DISABLED ACTIVE   30720     STRIPE    -            RW 
sd disk02-01  v03-01    disk01   620544   10240     0         c1b0t3d0     ENA
pl v03-02     v03       DISABLED NODEVICE 10240     CONCAT    -            RW
sd disk01-04  v03-02    disk03   262144   10240     0         c1b0t2d2     ENA 

This volume has two plexes, v03-01 and v03-02. The first plex (v03-01) does not use any space on the invalid disk, so it can still be used. The second plex (v03-02) uses space on invalid disk disk01 and has a state of NODEVICE. Plex v03-02 must be removed. However, the volume still has one valid plex containing valid data. If the volume needs to be mirrored, another plex can be added later. Note the name of the volume if you wish to create another plex later.

6. To remove an invalid plex, the plex must be dissociated from the volume and then removed. This is done with the vxplex command. To remove the plex v03-02, enter the following command:

	vxplex -o rm dis v03-02
7. Once all the volumes have been cleaned up, you must clean up the disk configuration as described in the section "Disk Cleanup."

Disk Cleanup

Once all invalid volumes and plexes have been removed, the disk configuration can be cleaned up. Each disk that was removed, reinstalled, or replaced (as determined from the output of the vxdisk list command) must be removed from the configuration.

To remove the disk, use the vxdg command. To remove the failed disk disk01, enter:

vxdg rmdisk disk01

If the vxdg command returns an error message, some invalid mirrors exist. Repeat the processes described in the section "Volume Cleanup" until all invalid volumes and mirrors are removed.

Rootability Reconfiguration

Once all the invalid disks have been removed, the replacement or reinstalled disks can be added to Volume Manager control. If the root disk was originally under VxVM control or you now wish to put the root disk under VxVM control, add this disk first.

To add the root disk to Volume Manager control, use the Volume Manager Support Operations (vxdiskadm). Enter:

vxdiskadm
From the vxdiskadm main menu, select menu item 2 (Encapsulate a disk). Follow the instructions and encapsulate the root disk for the system. For more information, see the VERITAS Volume Manager User's Guide.

When the encapsulation is complete, reboot the system to multi-user mode.

Final Reconfiguration

Once the root disk is encapsulated, any other disks that were replaced should be added using vxdiskadm. If the disks were reinstalled during the operating system reinstallation, they should be encapsulated; otherwise, they can simply be added.

Once all the disks have been added to the system, any volumes that were completely removed as part of the configuration cleanup can be recreated and their contents restored from backup. The volume recreation can be done using vxassist or the Visual Administrator interface.

To recreate the volumes v01 and v02 using the vxassist command, enter:

vxassist make v01 24000 
vxassist make v02 30720 layout=stripe nstripe=3

Once the volumes are created, they can be restored from backup using normal backup/restore procedures.

Any volumes that had plexes removed as part of the volume cleanup can have these mirrors recreated by following the instructions for mirroring a volume (via vxassist or the Visual Administrator), as described in the VERITAS Volume Manager User's Guide.

To replace the plex removed from volume v03 using vxassist, enter:

vxassist mirror v03
Once you have restored the volumes and plexes lost during reinstallation, the recovery is complete and your system should be configured as it was prior to the failure.

Plex and Volume States

The following sections describe plex and volume states.

Plex States

Plex states reflect whether or not plexes are complete and consistent copies (mirrors) of the volume contents. VxVM utilities automatically maintain the plex state. However, a system administrator can modify the state of a plex if changes to the volume with which the plex is associated should not be written to it. For example, if a disk with a particular plex located on it begins to fail, that plex can be temporarily disabled.


Note: A plex does not have to be associated with a volume. A plex can be created with the vxmake plex command; a plex created with this command can later be attached to a volume if required.


VxVM utilities use plex states to:

This section explains plex states in detail and is intended for administrators who wish to have a detailed knowledge of plex states.

Plexes that are associated with a volume have one of the following states:

A Dirty Region Logging or RAID-5 log plex is a special case, as its state is always set to LOG.

EMPTY Plex State

Volume creation sets all plexes associated with the volume to the EMPTY state to indicate that the plex is not yet initialized.

CLEAN Plex State

A plex is in a CLEAN state when it is known to contain a consistent copy (mirror) of the volume contents and an operation has disabled the volume. As a result, when all plexes of a volume are clean, no action is required to guarantee that the plexes are identical when that volume is started.

ACTIVE Plex State

A plex can be in the ACTIVE state in two situations:

In the latter case, a system failure may leave plex contents in an inconsistent state. When a volume is started, VxVM performs a recovery action to guarantee that the contents of the plexes that are marked as ACTIVE are made identical.


Note: On a system running well, ACTIVE should be the most common state you see for any volume's plexes.


STALE Plex State

If there is a possibility that a plex does not have the complete and current volume contents, that plex is placed in the STALE state. Also, if an I/O error occurs on a plex, the kernel stops using and updating the contents of that plex, and an operation sets the state of the plex to STALE.

A vxplex att operation recovers the contents of a STALE plex from an ACTIVE plex. Atomic copy operations copy the contents of the volume to the STALE plexes. The system administrator can force a plex to the STALE state with a vxplex det operation.

OFFLINE Plex State

The vxmend off operation indefinitely detaches a plex from a volume by setting the plex state to OFFLINE. Although the detached plex maintains its association with the volume, changes to the volume do not update the OFFLINE plex until the plex is put online and reattached with the vxplex att operation. When this occurs, the plex is placed in the STALE state, which causes its contents to be recovered at the next vxvol start operation.

TEMP Plex State

Setting a plex to the TEMP state facilitates some plex operations that cannot occur in a truly atomic fashion. For example, attaching a plex to an enabled volume requires copying volume contents to the plex before it can be considered fully attached.

A utility will set the plex state to TEMP at the start of such an operation and to an appropriate state at the end of the operation. If the system goes down for any reason, a TEMP plex state indicates that the operation is incomplete; a subsequent vxvol start will dissociate plexes in the TEMP state.

TEMPRM Plex State

A TEMPRM plex state resembles a TEMP state except that at the completion of the operation, the TEMPRM plex is removed. Some subdisk operations require a temporary plex. Associating a subdisk with a plex, for example, requires updating the subdisk with the volume contents before actually associating the subdisk. This update requires associating the subdisk with a temporary plex, marked TEMPRM, until the operation completes and removes the TEMPRM plex.

If the system goes down for any reason, the TEMPRM state indicates that the operation did not complete successfully. A subsequent operation will dissociate and remove TEMPRM plexes.

TEMPRMSD Plex State

The TEMPRMSD plex state is used by vxassist when attaching new plexes. If the operation does not complete, the plex and its subdisks are removed.

IOFAIL Plex State

The IOFAIL plex state is associated with persistent state logging. On the detection of a failure of an ACTIVE plex, vxconfigd places that plex in the IOFAIL state so that it is disqualified from the recovery selection process at volume start time.

The Plex State Cycle

The changing of plex states accompanies normal operations. Deviations in plex state indicate abnormalities that VxVM must normalize. At system startup, volumes are automatically started and the vxvol start operation makes all CLEAN plexes ACTIVE. If all goes well until shutdown, the volume-stopping operation marks all ACTIVE plexes CLEAN and the cycle continues. Having all plexes CLEAN at startup (before vxvol start makes them ACTIVE) indicates a normal shutdown and optimizes startup.

Plex Kernel State

The plex kernel state indicates the accessibility of the plex. The plex kernel state is monitored in the volume driver and allows a plex to have an offline (DISABLED), maintenance (DETACHED), or online (ENABLED) mode of operation.

The following are plex kernel states:

Volume States

There are several volume states, some of which are similar to plex states:

The interpretation of these flags during volume startup is modified by the persistent state log for the volume (for example, the DIRTY/CLEAN flag). If the clean flag is set, this means that an ACTIVE volume was not written to by any processes or was not even open at the time of the reboot; therefore, it can be considered CLEAN. The clean flag will always be set in any case where the volume is marked CLEAN.

RAID-5 Volume States

RAID-5 volumes have their own set of volume states:

Volume Kernel State

The volume kernel state indicates the accessibility of the volume. The volume kernel state allows a volume to have an offline (DISABLED), maintenance (DETACHED), or online (ENABLED) mode of operation.

The following are volume kernel states:


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