VERITAS Volume Manager 3.5 Troubleshooting Guide (September 2004)

Recovery from Boot Disk Failure

Recovery by Reinstallation

Chapter 2

Reinstalling the System and Recovering VxVM

To reinstall the system and recover the Veritas Veritas Volume Manager conﬁguration,

use the following procedure. These steps are described in detail in the sections that

follow:

Step 1. “Prepare the System for Reinstallation” on page 38.

Replace any failed disks or other hardware, and detach any disks not involved in the

reinstallation.

Step 2. “Reinstall the Operating System” on page 38.

Reinstall the base system and any other unrelated Volume Manager packages.

Step 3. “Reinstall VxVM” on page 39.

Add the Volume Manager package, but do not execute the vxinstall command.

Step 4. “Recover the Veritas Volume Manager Conﬁguration” on page 39.

Step 5. “Clean up the System Conﬁguration” on page 40.

Restore any information in volumes affected by the failure or reinstallation, and recreate

system volumes (rootvol, swapvol, usr, and other system volumes).

Step 6. “Start up Hot-Relocation” on page 45.

Prepare the System for Reinstallation

To prevent the loss of data on disks not involved in the reinstallation, involve only the

root disk in the reinstallation procedure.

NOTE Several of the automatic options for installation access disks other than the root disk

without requiring conﬁrmation from the administrator. Disconnect all other disks

containing volumes from the system prior to reinstalling the operating system.

Disconnecting the other disks ensures that they are unaffected by the reinstallation. For

example, if the operating system was originally installed with a home ﬁle system on the

second disk, it can still be recoverable. Removing the second disk ensures that the home

ﬁle system remains intact.

Reinstall the Operating System

Once any failed or failing disks have been replaced and disks not involved with the

reinstallation have been detached, reinstall the operating system as described in your

operating system documentation. Install the operating system prior to installing VxVM.

Ensure that no disks other than the root disk are accessed in any way while the

operating system installation is in progress. If anything is written on a disk other than

the root disk, the Veritas Volume Manager conﬁguration on that disk may be destroyed.

NOTE During reinstallation, you can change the system’s host name (or host ID). It is

recommended that you keep the existing host name, as this is assumed by the

procedures in the following sections.