Veritas Volume Manager 5.0.1 Troubleshooting Guide, HP-UX 11i v3, First Edition, November 2009

To initiate VxVM MMB

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Boot the system from the primary or secondary boot device, and enter the

following command at the ISL boot prompt:

hpux -vm

This causes the bootloader and the HP-UX kernel to take alternate actions in

finding the parts of the system that are required to boot the system.

The bootloader starts reading the stand file system at 1KB block 3168 instead

of locating it from the LIF label. The VxVM kernel rootability code uses root

volume extent information in the /stand/rootconf file to set up the extents

of the root volume, and init is instructed to bring the system up to single-user

mode. When invoked from the pre_init_rc script, the vxconfigd daemon

exits gracefully if it determines from the kernel that the system is in MMB

mode. The system is left running with only the root volume mounted, and

VxVM runs with temporary objects pointing to the root volume.

Warning: 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.

See the vx_emerg_start(1M) manual page.

Recovery by reinstallation

If you configured VxVM rootability by installing via Ignite-UX, reinstalling from

a saved Ignite-UX configuration is usually sufficient to recover a failed boot disk.

See the Ignite-UX Administration Guide.

Complete reinstallation of the software 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 3 system, it is preferable to recover the system by booting

from a VxVM root disk mirror, or by booting from recovery media.

Recovering from boot disk failure

Recovery by reinstallation