Veritas Volume Manager 4.1 Administrator's Guide (HP-UX 11i v3, February 2007)

Rootability
82 VERITAS Volume Manager Administrator’s Guide
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 84 for details of how to configure
a bootable VxVM root disk from an existing LVM root disk.
Note From the AR0902 release of HP-UX 11i onward, you can choose to configure either a
VxVM root disk or an LVM root disk at install time. 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 disk group that you choose to be the
bootdg 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 /.
◆ Any volume with an entry in the LIF LABEL record must be contiguous. It can have
only one subdisk, and it cannot span to another disk.
◆ The rootvol and swapvol volumes must have the special volume usage types root
and swap respectively.
◆ Only the disk access types auto with format hpdisk, and simple are suitable for
use as VxVM root disks, root disk mirrors, or as hot-relocation spares for such disks.
An auto-configured cdsdisk format disk, which supports the Cross-platform Data