topic Re: extendfs in Operating System - HP-UX

extendfs

Oliver Schmitz — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 02:26:50 GMT

Dear all,

I started a thread and gave points for your nice answers in http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1056402

However, this thread is not yet finnished bacause I can not extend the file system.

First my problem was that I could not unmount /home. I found after your helpfull answers that other NFS were mounted inside home. After unmounting them it runs fine.

Then I used SAM to increase the available disk space for the lvol of /home. Subsequently I performed

$extendfs -F hfs /home and it gives: extendfs hfs: error: character special file required.

The special file is on the right place in /dev/vgraid. Does anyone sees a reason why this error occurs or does anyone have an idea what could be the problem?

Thanks for further help. I need our /home back!

BR,
Oliver

Re: extendfs

Luk Vandenbussche — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 02:39:27 GMT

Oliver,

The command is

extendfs -F hfs /dev/vg00/rlvolX

X = number off the logical volume of /home
You can check this in /etc/fstab

Re: extendfs

Yang Qin_1 — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 02:53:15 GMT

Hi, Oliver,

Make sure your /home FS type is "hfs" but not "vxfs". If you use a wrong FS Type, even you run "extendfs -F hfs /dev/vg00/rlvolx" it will not work.

To check FS Type, run "cat /etc/fstab | grep home"

Regards,
Yang

Re: extendfs

Oliver Schmitz — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 02:53:25 GMT

Dear Luk,

in /etc/fstab I found the device special file /dev/vgraid/lvol_home for my /home fs.

I did extend -F hfs /dev/vgraid/lvol_home and got again the message that a character special file is required.

I tried the same with the lvol of /opt (special file /dev/vg00/lvol16) and it doesn't work either.

Any additional idea?

Thanks and regs,
Oliver

Re: extendfs

Victor BERRIDGE — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 03:02:21 GMT

Hi Oliver,

There is a thing I dont understand here, if you have inceased the size of your logical volume using SAM, then SAM automaticaly has extended your filesystem for you... (so the error would be : It is already this size...)

Now the error character device special file required means you have entered the block device: ~/vgXX/lvolyy id block

~/vgXX/rlvolyy is character (notice the "r" in front of lvol?

All the best
Victor

Re: extendfs

MarkSyder — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 03:05:19 GMT

Oliver,

Read Luk's answer again: it's not the lvol file, it's the rlvol file.

Mark Syder (like the drink but spelt different)

Re: extendfs

Luk Vandenbussche — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 04:10:41 GMT

Like Marc said

extend -F hfs /dev/vgraid/rlvol_home

Re: extendfs

Oliver Schmitz — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 08:08:02 GMT

Folks,

thanks really a lot for your advices. Certainly I had to take the raw device file. extendfs run with that at least to some point. Then I got a different error:

extended size to 64000 MB (from 20000)

extendfs -F hfs /dev/vg00/rlvol_home

starts to run and shows a lot of numbers ...
stops at ...., 65535152,
read error: 943063040
rdfs:No such device or adress

Do you have any ides by what this might be caused?

Thanks for help, I am lost...
Oliver

Re: extendfs

IT_2007 — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 08:36:58 GMT

So are you trying to extend from 20GB to 60GB?

Do you have enough free space on that filesystem? Also check /tmp isn't filled out.

once you unmount /home and then you need to run the following commands:

umount /home
lvextend -L /dev/vgXX/lvolYY
extendfs -F vxfs /dev/vgXX/lvolYY

Remember that "hfs" is only for /stand and not for /home. You need to change to vxfs in the extendfs command.

Re: extendfs

Oliver Schmitz — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 10:09:27 GMT

Dear IT-2007,

the existing file system is hfs. What will happen if I extend now with vxfs?

Thanks for confirmation,
Oliver

Re: extendfs

IT_2007 — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 10:13:57 GMT

Don't think you would be able to run extendfs. Feel there might be size limitation. You need to check with HP.

Re: extendfs

Oliver Schmitz — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 10:21:50 GMT

Hi again,

there is enough space on the FS (almost 800 GB). However, I would like to make a sufficient user space management. Unfortunately I run into this kind of very strange problems with basic system functoins. I really argue on that...

I hope you or anyone else have another idea. It really makes the system unusable.

With whom at HP could I check?

BR,
Oliver

Re: extendfs

Pete Randall — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 10:23:39 GMT

Just to confirm the file system type - run the fstyp command:

fstyp /dev/vgraid/lvol_home

It should return either hfs or vxfs.

Pete

Re: extendfs

Yang Qin_1 — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 10:27:22 GMT

Hi, Oliver,

To be able to help you, would you please provide us the output of commands:

cat /etc/fstab | grep home
and
lvdisplay /dev/vg00/lvol_home

Regards,
Yang

Re: extendfs

Jonathan Fife — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 10:47:36 GMT

HFS filesystems can be up to 256GB (http://docs.hp.com/en/B2355-60105/mkfs_hfs.1M.html?jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN), so the problem is probably that the logical volume hasn't been extended yet.

If you do an lvdisplay /dev/vg00/lvol_home it should give you the size of the lvol and how many free extents there are.

As for the vxfs vs. hfs comments -- it shouldn't matter if you are using HFS. If it actually becomes a problem there is a tool (vxfsconvert) that can convert a filesystem from hfs to vxfs. Like I said, though, that shouldn't be an issue.

Re: extendfs

Victor BERRIDGE — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 10:54:51 GMT

Hi again,
>"here is enough space on the FS (almost 800 GB). However, I would like to make a sufficient user space management. Unfortunately I run into this kind of very strange problems with basic system functoins. I really argue on that..."

I suppose you ment volume group...
My concern here is you are in HFS well there are some limitations such as size:128GB
and more specificaly you must unmount to extend , after a crash the time to do fsck is exponential with size (so very big takes ages... I remembered staying up very late once the system took 5 hours...) and has a limited number of inodes per file system...

I see only one solution: create a vxfs filesystem and restore/copy /home in it then mount this new vxfs filesystem on /home...

All the best
Victor

Re: extendfs

Victor BERRIDGE — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 10:59:05 GMT

Hi Jonathan,

I see the limit has been raized then? or is it specific to 11iv2?
I just realised we are discusssing of an issue not knowing anything of the OS nor architecture, which could help us understand a bit better (patching etc...)

Re: extendfs

Victor BERRIDGE — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 11:05:35 GMT

I just found a doc that says 128GB (just for info...)
http://docs.hp.com/en/5971-2383/5971-2383.pdf

All the best
Victor

Re: extendfs

Jonathan Fife — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 11:18:25 GMT

Victor,

Very curious -- I guess this note says it all: "Although it may be possible to create files or file systems larger than these documented limits, HP does not support such files and file systems, and the results of using them may be unpredictable."

I'm glad I use VxFS for everything but /stand, then :)

In any case, all of this is academic as Oliver is only trying to extend to 64GB, which is well under both the supported and unsupported size limits.

Re: extendfs

Oliver Schmitz — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 08:53:59 GMT

Dear all,

I really appreciate this great help of all of you. However, I couldn't yet solve the problem.
Therefore I collected the information which some of you requested to have a better insight.

1.)
I did
$fstyp /dev/vgraid/lvol_home and it says that I have hfs

2.) The output of
$ cat /etc/fstab |grep home is posted in the attached file fstab_home.txt

and the output of
$lvdisplay /dev/vgraid/lvol_home is posted in the attached file lvdisplay.out

I hope this helps some of you to resolve inconsistencies (meanwhile I treid to come to 70 GB).

Meanwhile I come to the conclusion that there is something very strange and therefore I am thinking on creating a new lvol for /home (maybe with vxfs) and copy all the stuff to this new home. I have two questions concerning this:
- How can I copy everything with keeping all permissions unchanged?
- What will (most likely) happen with the other lvol. I don't want to loose the discspace. Any idea how I could clean this up and use it again?

Thanks again for your help. I hope to get into work with this WS soon. It is really disapointing!

Oliver