Managing Systems and Workgroups: A Guide for HP-UX System Administrators

Administering a System: Managing Disks and Files

Managing Disks

Chapter 6578

Creating Root Volume Group and Root and Boot Logical Volumes

NOTE VERITAS Volume Manager (VXVM)

The VERITAS Volume Manager included in the operating environments

as of the September 2002 release of HP-UX 11i version (B.11.11) enables

rootability. With VxVM rootability, you can choose to conﬁgure your root

volume during installation with Ignite-UX, or you can use the conversion

tools installed with VxVM to conﬁgure your root volume at a later time.

For more information, read the VERITAS Volume Manager 3.5

Installation Guide for more details.

Before you consider setting your root volume to VxVM, be sure to read

the VERITAS Volume Manager 3.5 Release Notes and the VERITAS

Volume Manager 3.5 Migration Guide on http://docs.hp.com for more

detailed information about VxVM and rootability.

Please note that there can be newer versions of these documents

available on the documentation website.

With non-LVM disks, a single root disk contained all the attributes

needed for boot up as well as your system ﬁles, primary swap, and dump.

Using LVM, a single root disk is replaced by a pool of disks, a root

volume group, which contains all of the same elements but allowing a

root logical volume,aboot logical volume,aswap logical volume,

and one or more dump logical volumes. Each of these types of logical

volumes must be contiguous, that is, contained on a single disk.

(Additionally, there can be other noncontiguous logical volumes which

might be used for user data.) See “Managing Swap and Dump” on

page 662 for more information on the swap and dump logical volumes.

The root logical volume contains the operating system software. You

have the option of using a separate boot logical volume instead of

combining root and boot operations within a single logical volume. When

you conﬁgure both a root and boot logical volume, you store information

that enables the system to locate the kernel in two locations rather than

only one which is the case with using just the root logical volume. As a

result, you will still be able to boot the system even if the LABEL ﬁle,

normally essential to a system boot, becomes corrupt.