topic Re: replacing bad hard drive in Operating System - HP-UX

replacing bad hard drive

Heath Ramos — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 16:15:13 GMT

I need to replace a bad hard drive and need to know the exact steps.

First of all....my set up. I am running hp-ux 11.0 on a D380. I received a notification email stating a hard drive is failing that included the hard drive path. I matched that path to the device and volume group (vg01 and /dev/dsk/c0t8d0). I also noted the logical volumes in the vg01 volume group. This isn't being mirrored.

What steps do I need to do in order to replace it (vgcfgrestore? vgchange? etc).

How do I know which drive in the drive bay is the hard drive in question?

Re: replacing bad hard drive

James R. Ferguson — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 16:29:08 GMT

Hi Heath:

The best guide for dealing with disk failures is this:

http://www.docs.hp.com/en/5991-1236/When_Good_Disks_Go_Bad.pdf

Regards!

...JRF...

Re: replacing bad hard drive

Torsten. — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 16:48:56 GMT

As mentioned before, best advice is at
http://docs.hp.com/en/5991-1236/When_Good_Disks_Go_Bad.pdf

The disk is not mirroed, so shutdown, replace the disk, restore the config (vgcfgrestore); activate the vg, mount the volumes and restore the backup ...

Re: replacing bad hard drive

Heath Ramos — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 17:00:43 GMT

thanks for the responses

how would I know which hard drive is the one failing, meaning the physical location in the server?

Re: replacing bad hard drive

James R. Ferguson — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 17:29:37 GMT

Hi (again) Heath:

how would I know which hard drive is the one failing, meaning the physical location in the server?

If the drive is a local one and it has LED lights, you can try lighting the LED:

# dd if=/dev/rdsk/c0t8d0 of=/dev/null bs=1024k

...kill with Control_C...

Regards!

...JRF...

Re: replacing bad hard drive

Patrick Wallek — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 18:34:45 GMT

In a D380, the disk with path t8 should be the 2nd drive from the top. From the top down, the drives are typically have SCSI ID's 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, I believe.

Re: replacing bad hard drive

Heath Ramos — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 13:28:13 GMT

after reading that doc, I am going to do the following steps.

shutdown -h
replace 2nd hard drive from the top
boot the system
vgcfgrestore -n vg01 /dev/rdsk/c0t8d0
vgchange -a y vg01
***newfs [options] /dev/vg01/rlvol10
***newfs [options] /dev/vg01/rlvol13
mount /dev/vg01/lvol10 /db01
mount /dev/vg01/lvol13 /usr/oracle
restore from backup

I am not sure what options I need to put for the newfs commands

Re: replacing bad hard drive

James R. Ferguson — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 13:46:30 GMT

Hi Heath:

Assuming that your filesystems are VxFS (JFS) ones, simply do:

# newfs -F vxfs -o largefiles /dev/vg01/rlvol10
# newfs -F vxfs -o largefiles /dev/vg01/rlvol13

The size of the filesystem will be that of the logical volume and the block size will be the default value (1024 bytes).

Setting the 'largefiles' bit enables files larger than 2GB to exist in the filesystem. Make sure that 'nolargefiles' is NOT set in '/etc/fstab' or you will not be able to mount the filesystems at boot.

Regards!

...JRF...

Re: replacing bad hard drive

Heath Ramos — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 13:50:06 GMT

I was looking at my /etc/mnttab file and it says hfs for the logical volumes in question.

Should I just use that option?

newfs -F hfs /dev/vg01/rlvol10
newfs -F hfs /dev/vg01/rlvol13

Re: replacing bad hard drive

Heath Ramos — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 14:23:15 GMT

do I want to be in single user mode when I boot back up after replacing the hard drive?

Re: replacing bad hard drive

James R. Ferguson — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 14:25:32 GMT

Hi (again) Heath:

I'm surprised that you would still be running an HFS filesystem. VxFS ones are more robust and have been the default choice since 10.10 or 10.20.

That said, you can choose either. Substituting '-F hfs' for '-F vxfs' is correct. Edit your '/etc/fstab' appropriately. If you choose to create VxFS filesystems edit 'fstab' to look like:

/dev/vg01/lvol10 /db01 vxfs delaylog 0 2
/dev/vg01/lvol13 /usr/oracle vxfs delaylog 0 2

Regards!

...JRF...

Re: replacing bad hard drive

skt_skt — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 14:25:45 GMT

Stanadard practice is only the /stand file system is of hfs type.Rest all is always can be vxfs type..

I would suggest to make it vxfs as you are getting a chance now.. I manage HP-UX servers(Includes 10.20.
;11.00 and 11.11 and 11.23) and i what i said true for all except for 11.23.

For 11.23 /stand is vxfs too.