Veritas File System 5.0 Release Notes, HP-UX 11i v3, First Edition, May 2008

Compatibility With Previous Versions of VxFS
The following section discusses the compatibility of VxFS 5.0 with the previous VxFS releases:
• The VxFS 5.0 release does not support creating or mounting disk layout version 1, 2, or 3
file systems. HP recommends that you upgrade any previously installed VxFS file system
to Disk Layout Version 7 available with VxFS 5.0.
An online conversion utility vxupgrade is provided to upgrade existing disk layouts to
Disk Layout Version 7 on mounted file systems.
CAUTION: Do not upgrade /stand and / file systems to Disk Layout Version 6 or Disk
Layout 7. The HP-UX boot loader does not understand this layout. The HP-UX boot loader
does not recognize DLV greater than 5.
• The disk layout of a VxFS file system can be upgraded after installing VxFS 5.0. Use the
vxupgrade (1M) command to upgrade the disk layout from Version 4 or 5 to disk layout
Version 6, and then upgrade to Version 7 on a mounted file system. Use the vxfsconvert (1M)
command to convert an unmounted file system to VxFS Disk Layout Version 7.
NOTE: A Disk Layout Version 7 or Disk Layout Version 6 file system created with VxFS
5.0 software is not accessible if the VxFS 5.0 file system software is removed and the system
is reverted to VxFS 4.1, which is the default supported with HP-UX 11i v3 release.
Features no Longer Supported
• Version 4 and Version 5 file system disk layouts for shared (cluster) mounts
VxFS 5.0 supports shared (cluster) mount only for file systems with disk layout 6 or 7. If
you have a shared (cluster) mounted file system with disk layout versions 4 or 5, you will
need to mount this file system locally (without the -o cluster mount option) and upgrade
the disk layout to version 6 or 7 before mounting it with the -o cluster mount option.
• I/O error mount options
In this and future releases, only the ioerror=disable and ioerror=mdisable mount
options are supported for clustered file systems. Other ioerror mount options are not
supported. For more information, see mount_vxfs(1M).
Known Problems And Workarounds
Following known problems exist for VxFS 5.0:
• Problem
When conducting stress tests on large sized files, the system may hang due to a memory
pressure issue. When read/write operations are performed on files whose sizes are
approaching the limit of physical memory available on the system, the system hangs.
Workaround
Install all the required HP-UX patches. For more information on the list of current patches,
see the Veritas 5.0 Installation Guide.
• Problem
When running Oracle on VxFS (without ODM), Oracle encounters an I/O error.
Workaround
Set the Oracle tunable DB_FILE_MULTIBLOCK_READ_COUNT to the following:
(DB_FILE_MULTIBLOCK_READ_COUNT * DB_BLOCK_SIZE ) <= 64K.
This new tunable setting eliminates the I/O error.
16 Veritas File System 5.0 Release Notes