lvextend: Logical volume could not be changed. The driver has wrong number of mirrors informatio

[rianui]

Hi Gurus,

I have been creating logical volumes on a Disk System 2405 (FC). I created two volume groups on it and out of over 300 LVs that I want to create, I have successfullyu created about 175. However one VG is now giving me errors when I try to create more even though the space is not used up yet. See below and advice me where I could be going wrong.

# lvextend -L 2000 /dev/vgsybase/equinox17_dat
Device file path "/dev/dsk/c5t0d0" is an alternate path
to the Physical Volume. Using Primary Link "/dev/dsk/c4t0d0".
Device file path "/dev/dsk/c5t2d0" is an alternate path
to the Physical Volume. Using Primary Link "/dev/dsk/c4t2d0".
Device file path "/dev/dsk/c5t3d0" is an alternate path
to the Physical Volume. Using Primary Link "/dev/dsk/c4t3d0".
Device file path "/dev/dsk/c5t12d0" is an alternate path
to the Physical Volume. Using Primary Link "/dev/dsk/c4t12d0".
LVM: Unable to map all the LEs to unique PEs.
lvextend: The LVM device driver could not extend the
logical volume "/dev/vgsybase/equinox17_dat".
lvextend: Logical volume "/dev/vgsybase/equinox17_dat" could not be changed.
The driver has wrong number of mirrors information:
Invalid argument

# vgdisplay vgsybase
--- Volume groups ---
VG Name                     /dev/vgsybase
VG Write Access             read/write
VG Status                   available
Max LV                      255
Cur LV                      107
Open LV                     107
Max PV                      16
Cur PV                      10
Act PV                      10
Max PE per PV               8683
VGDA                        20
PE Size (Mbytes)            4
Total PE                    86672
Alloc PE                    42975
Free PE                     43697
Total PVG                   4
Total Spare PVs             0
Total Spare PVs in use      0

Regards,

Rianui

[Ralf Seefeldt]

Hi Rianui,

I assume, you got a solution for your problem of last week.

• So, The OS informs you four times that the device files c5tXd0, is a alternate paths to physical devices c4tXd0.
  Is this correct or is the OS wring with this reply?
• Your VG consists of 10 disks, what about the 2 disks not mentionend in the reply to your lvextend command?
• How did you create the VG and the LVs? Are you distributed?
• What OS Version do you run?
• vgdisplay -v will tell you whether or not several of your disks are completely full. Are they?
• Did you ever think about switching to agile devicefiles (with 11.31, only) This /dev/dsk/c5t12d0 and /dev/dsk/c4t12d0 would be summed up to /dev/disk/disk<number>. You would not have to take care of alternate path's anymore.
• how did you create the LV /dev/vgsybase/equinox17_dat?

It looks like you used the physikal devices AND the alternate paths in the lvcreate command.

If so, remove the alternate paths vrom the LV. If it is still empty, you may delete it and recreate it. You may create it with al least as many PE, as you use disks in that VG. Thus, you could see that all required disks are used as you intend.

Bye

Ralf

[rianui]

Hi Ralf,

Thanks again for your response. 

I assume, you got a solution for your problem of last week.

--I decided to reconfigure the storage again. I deleted the existing configuration and created it afresh. I'm now in the process of restoring data.

For today's query, after the LVs failed to create properly and extend onto the mirrored disks, I resulted to doing it one by one on SAM and it was successful!! :-)

See more responses for your queries below. I will update the case once I'm done.

• So, The OS informs you four times that the device files c5tXd0, is a alternate paths to physical devices c4tXd0.
  Is this correct or is the OS wring with this reply?

--Yes this is correct

• Your VG consists of 10 disks, what about the 2 disks not mentionend in the reply to your lvextend command?

--The error comes up after the lv has been created successfully on the first disk. The errors come while trying to extend it to the other disks.

• How did you create the VG and the LVs? Are you distributed?

--Yes I have distributed. Look at the attached document for the commands I ran. I created other LVs manually comparing the with the good server that is currently in use.

• What OS Version do you run?

--B.11.23

• vgdisplay -v will tell you whether or not several of your disks are completely full. Are they?

--They were not, even though the error was reporting so.

• Did you ever think about switching to agile devicefiles (with 11.31, only) This /dev/dsk/c5t12d0 and /dev/dsk/c4t12d0 would be summed up to /dev/disk/disk<number>. You would not have to take care of alternate path's anymore.

--Not really. Both systems are running on version2. The client would not be willing to move to version 3 on these old boxes. There are newer servers/storage running on version 3 on the live platform.

• how did you create the LV /dev/vgsybase/equinox17_dat?

-- I was using a script to run the commands but after resulting to creating them all manually, The creation was successful.

One mountain at a time and the system will be up and running.

Once again, thanks!!

Best Regards,

Rianui