VERITAS Volume Manager 4.1 Administrator's Guide
Chapter 2 88
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 90 for details of how to configure a
bootable VxVM root disk from an existing LVM root disk.
NOTE In the AR0902 release of HP-UX 11i, you can choose to configure either a VxVM
root disk or an LVM root disk at install time. Refer 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 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 /.
• 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 Sharing
(CDS) feature, cannot be used. The vxcp_lvmroot and vxrootmir commands
automatically configure a suitable disk type on the physical disks that you