VERITAS Volume Manager 3.2 for HP-UX Release Notes

Known Problems and Workarounds

Chapter 124

VxVM and Older Quantum Disk Drives

• Problem: The VERITAS Volume Manager makes use of the kernel-to-kernel passthrough

ioctl SCSI command feature in HP-UX. VxVM issues SCSI inquiry commands to devices

on the system to recognize individual disks and sort out host to device connection

pathways.

Some older Quantum disks (models PD210S and PD425S) do not respond properly to SCSI

inquiry command when the device is in certain states. As a consequence, these devices are

not recognized by VxVM and, as such, cannot be used as disks for VxVM. A vxdisk

command may list the device in error state or may not list at all. Any attempt to define the

device for VxVM will fail.

• Workaround: None

Duplicate Device Name Creation in rootdg

• Problem: When you create new volumes in the rootdg disk group, two sets of device nodes

are created: under both /dev/vx/[r]dsk/ and /dev/vx/[r]dsk/rootdg. Although either

path can be used for mkfs (1M) or mount (1M), the duplicate sets of device node names can

be confusing.

• Workaround: We recommend using the full pathname to rootdg disk devices in command

line arguments. This is consistent with the naming of device nodes in other disk groups.

For example, to mount a rootdg volume use:

# mount -F vxfs /dev/vx/dsk/rootdg/vol01 /vol01

Do not use /dev/vx/dsk/vol01 as the pathname.

vmsa (1M) will always use the full pathname.

vxassist Sometimes Applies the Wrong Layout to a Mirrored Volume

• Problem: While doing relayout on a mirrored volume, the vxassist command keeps the

volume as mirrored even if the layout attribute is specified as stripe or nomirror. For

example, see the following commands:

# vxassist make vol 1g layout=mirror-stripe ncol=3

# vxassist relayout vol layout=stripe ncol=2

The volume vol is converted to a 2-column volume, but it is still mirrored even if the

layout attribute is specified as stripe and nomirror.

• Workaround: None.