Veritas Volume Manager 5.0 Troubleshooting Guide Guide (September 2006)

39Recovery from boot disk failure
Recovery by reinstallation
Caution: The VxVM configuration daemon, vxconfigd, does not normally run in MMB
mode, and only one copy of the root volume data is used. If the system has a mirrored root
volume, writing to the root file system can thus cause file system corruption when both
mirrors are subsequently configured. To prevent this, start VxVM in MMB mode by
running the
vx_emerg_start command. This marks the non-boot mirror plexes as stale,
and so forces a recovery from the boot mirror to the non-boot mirrors to take place. After
VxVM has been started in MMB mode, various recovery options can be performed
depending on the nature of the problem. For more information, see the
vx_emerg_start(1M) manual page.
Recovery by reinstallation
Note: If you configured VxVM rootability by installing via Ignite-UX, consult the
“System Recovery” section of the Ignite-UX Administration Guide, before consulting this
section. In many instances, reinstalling from a saved Ignite-UX configuration is sufficient
to recover a failed boot disk.
Reinstallation is only necessary if all copies of your boot (root) disk are damaged, or if
certain critical files are lost due to file system damage. If these types of failures occur, any
volumes that are not directly involved in the failure do not need to be reconfigured. On an
HP-UX 11i version 2 system, it is preferable to use the recovery methods described in
“Recovery by booting from a VxVM root disk mirror” on page 35 and “Recovery by
booting from recovery media” on page 36.