VERITAS Volume Manager 3.5 Administrator's Guide (September 2004)

Chapter 2 85
Rootability
Rootability indicates that the volumes containing the root file system
and the system swap area are under VxVM control. Without rootability,
VxVM is usually started after the operating system kernel has passed
control to the initial user mode process at boot time. However, if the
volume containing the root file system is under VxVM control, the kernel
starts portions of VxVM before starting the first user mode process.
Under HP-UX, a bootable root disk contains a Logical Interchange
Format (LIF) area. The LIF LABEL record in the LIF area contains
information about the starting block number, and the length of the
volumes that contain the stand and root file systems and the system
swap area. When a VxVM root disk is made bootable, the LIF LABEL
record is initialized with volume extent information for the stand, root,
swap, and dump (if present) volumes.
See “Setting up a VxVM Root Disk and Mirror” on page 87 for details of
how to configure a bootable VxVM root disk from an existing LVM root
disk.
NOTE You can use HP-UX Ignite_UX to configure either a VxVM or an LVM
root disk during installation. See the HP-UX Installation and
Configuration Guide for more information.
See the chapter “Recovery from Boot Disk Failure” in the VERITAS
Volume Manager Troubleshooting Guide, for information on how to
replace a failed boot disk.
VxVM Root Disk Volume Restrictions
Volumes on a bootable VxVM-root disk have the following configuration
restrictions:
• All volumes on the root disk must be in the rootdg disk group.
• The names of the volumes with entries in the LIF LABEL record
must be standvol, rootvol, swapvol, and dumpvol (if present). The
names of the volumes for other file systems on the root disk are
generated by appending vol to the name of their mount point under /.