Veritas notes

The following notes are for Veritas Volume Manager 3.2 for Solaris.

"vxvm:vxconfigd: ERROR: enable failed: Error in disk group configuration copies
Disk group has no valid configuration copies; transactions are disabled."

When receiving this error during system boot and when running vxinstall, follow the steps detailed in http://www.eng.auburn.edu/pub/mail-lists/veritas-users.May99/msg00048.html

In my case, the rootdg configuration was apparently corrupted. After issuing touch /etc/vx/reconfig.d/state.d/install-db and rebooting the machine, I was able to run vxinstall.

vxvm:vxdg: ERROR: Disk group disk_group: import failed: Disk group has no valid configuration copies"

This error can occur when attempting to import a disk group that was configured using a later version of VxVM. In this case, the disk group was configured with VxVM 3.2, but VxVM 3.1.1 was installed.

# pkginfo -l VRTSvxvm
   PKGINST: VRTSvxvm
      NAME: VERITAS Volume Manager, Binaries
CATEGORY: system
      ARCH: sparc
   VERSION: 3.1.1,REV=01.30.2001.22.21

Upgrading to at least the same version of VxVM used to configure the disk group will allow the disk group to be imported.

"ld.so.1: vxconfigd: fatal: libdevid.so.1: open failed: No such file or directory"

With Solaris 8 and VxVM 3.2, the shared library libdevid.so.1 does not get copied to /etc/vx/slib after installing Veritas. If you do not manually copy this shared library to /etc/vx/slib, your system will not boot. Follow these steps to make your system bootable:

1. Boot off a CD-ROM.
2. Mount your root and usr file systems.
3. Copy /usr/lib/libdevid.so.1 to /etc/vx/slib
4. Unmount your root and usr file systems and reboot.

More information:
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=veritas-vx&m=102636855529467&w=2

Clearing device locks

To clear a device lock, use the vxdisk clearimport command:
vxdisk clearimport devicename

ex. vxdisk clearimport c0t1d0

Using a Sun StorEdge A5000 disk array with Veritas

Make sure the array(s) are recognized by the operating system.

# luxadm probe
Found Enclosure(s):
SENA               Name:a1   Node WWN:50800200000276e0
Logical Path:/dev/es/ses2
Logical Path:/dev/es/ses7
SENA               Name:a2   Node WWN:5080020000028020
Logical Path:/dev/es/ses3
Logical Path:/dev/es/ses6
SENA               Name:a0   Node WWN:5080020000026f38
Logical Path:/dev/es/ses4
Logical Path:/dev/es/ses5
SENA               Name:a3   Node WWN:5080020000027060
Logical Path:/dev/es/ses8
Logical Path:/dev/es/ses9

Run Veritas' device discovery program.

# vxdctl enable

Determining maximum size of a volume

vxassist [ -g diskgroup ] maxsize layout=layout [attributes]

Example:

vxassist -g datadg maxsize layout=concat

layout may be concat, mirror, raid5, mirror-stripe, or stripe-mirror.

Veritas disk requirements

Disks managed by VxVM must have (1) two free partitions and (2) 2048 sectors of free space. The prtvtoc command displays how many sectors are in a disk cylinder:

# prtvtoc /dev/rdsk/c0t86d0s2
* /dev/rdsk/c0t86d0s2 partition map
*
* Dimensions:
*     512 bytes/sector
*     133 sectors/track
*      27 tracks/cylinder
*    3591 sectors/cylinder
*    4926 cylinders
*    4924 accessible cylinders

In this example, leave at least 1 cylinder free in your disk layout to allow for VxVM. If the disk is a boot disk, VxVM can shrink the swap partition to create space for VxVM's configuration data, but two free slices are essential for encapsulation.

Creating a volume with vxassist

ex.
# vxassist -g datadg maxsize
Maximum volume size: 35356672 (17264Mb)

# vxassist -g datadg make volume 35356672

Create the vxfs file system:
# mkfs -F vxfs /dev/vx/rdsk/datadg/db_backups
    version 4 layout
    35356672 sectors, 17678336 blocks of size 1024, log size 16384 blocks
    unlimited inodes, largefiles not supported
    17678336 data blocks, 17657432 free data blocks
    540 allocation units of 32768 blocks, 32768 data blocks
    last allocation unit has 16384 data blocks

Create the mount point:
# mkdir /db_backups

Mount the vxfs file system:
# mount -F vxfs /dev/vx/dsk/datadg/db_backups /db_backups

Add an /etc/vfstab entry to mount the file system after a reboot.

Replacing a failed disk

After replacing a failed disk in a SENA, make sure to run vxdctl enable for device discovery. Otherwise, you may encounter vxdmpadm errors:

Initialization of disk device c1t74d0 failed.
Error: vxvm:vxdmpadm: ERROR: Error in ioctl/open
vxdmpadm: No such file or directory
vxvm:vxdmpadm: ERROR: Invalid da_name
vxvm:vxdmpadm: ERROR: Invalid da_name
vxdisksetup: c1t74d0: Device address must be of the form cCtTdD or mcCtTdD where

    C = host bus adapter controller number
    T = target device controller number, if used
    D = logical unit (disk) number within target device controller

# vxdisk list c1t74d0s2
Device:    c1t74d0s2
devicetag: c1t74d0
type:      sliced
flags:     online error private autoconfig
errno:     Device path not valid
Multipathing information:
numpaths:   2
c1t74d0s2       state=disabled
c5t74d0s2       state=disabled

When replacing a failed internal disk on a Sun E450 running Solaris 8, I had to spin the disk down using ssaadm stop /dev/rdsk/cxtxdxs2as the vxdiskadm's "Disable (offline) a disk device" did not seem to spin the disk down. If you are using a Sun system with FC-AL devices, you will want to use the luxadm command.

After replacing the disk, I enabled device discovery with vxdctl enable and un-relocated the failed subdisks back to this disk using /usr/lib/vxvm/bin/vxunreloc -g disk_group replaced_disk.

Adding additional users to VxVM electronic mail notifications

By default, VxVM sends electronic mail to the root user when failures are detected and hot-relocation is being performed. To notify additional users,

1. Edit /etc/init.d/vxvm-recover
2. Change the line containing vxrelocd root & to vxrelocd root user1 user2 ... &
This will preserve the change across system reboot.
3. To have the change take effect immediately, make sure that hot-relocation is not currently being performed by running vxtask list, kill the vxrelocd process, and run nohup vxrelocd root user1 user2 ... &

Miscellaneous

Adding a disk to a disk group:
vxdiskadd disk_name

Creating a subdisk:
vxmake [-g groupname] sd subdisk diskname,offset,length

Creating a plex:
vxmake [-g groupname] plex plex sd=subdisk1[,subdisk2,...]

Creating a volume with vxmake:
vxmake [-g groupname] -U fsgen vol volume plex=plex1[,plex2,...]

Note: use gen instead of fsgen if you are creating a raw file system for RDBMS usage. fsgen is appropriate for general file system usage. More information on fsgen vs. gen.

After creating the volume, initialize the volume with vxvol start volume. If applicable, create the file system with newfs, create the mount point, and mount the volume as a file system.

Associating subdisks with plexes:
vxsd assoc plex subdisk1 [subdisk2 subdisk3 ...]

Displaying free disk space in a diskgroup:
vxdg [-g groupname] free

Dissociating subdisks from plexes:
vxsd dis subdisk

Dissociating subdisks from plexes, removing subdisk from VxVM:
vxsd -o rm dis subdisk

Dissociating and removing plexes and all associated subdisks:
vxplex -o rm dis plex

Removing a disk from a disk group:
vxdg [-g groupname] rmdisk diskname

Renaming a disk:
vxedit rename old_diskname new_diskname

Removing a volume (vxassist):
vxassist remove volume volume

Removing a volume (vxedit):
vxedit [-r] [-f] rm volume

-r -- recursive removal
-f -- force removal; needed if volume is enabled

Moving hot-relocated subdisks back to their original disk with vxunreloc:
/usr/lib/vxvm/bin/vxunreloc [-g groupname]original_disk

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