topic Re: Idisk on 11.31 : strange sizes in Operating System - HP-UX

Idisk on 11.31 : strange sizes

Jean Mesquida_1 — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 04:34:05 GMT

Hi all,

I'm trying to mirror boot disk on my new RX2660 which has been factory installed by HP with HP-UX 11.31.

First, I noticed that the size of slice 1 is unusual (not rounded to MB) as per diskinfo :

SCSI describe of /dev/rdisk/disk12_p1:
vendor: HP
product id: DH072ABAA6
type: direct access
size: 511968 Kbytes
bytes per sector: 512

Slices 2 and 3 are OK :
size: 70765568 Kbytes
size: 409600 Kbytes

When I try idisk with the usual partition file :

3
EFI 500MB
HPUX 100%
HPSP 400MB

The last slice (3) is created on the mirror disk with a size of 408736 KB instead of 409600 KB :

SCSI describe of /dev/rdisk/disk10_p3:
vendor: HP
product id: DH072ABAA6
type: direct access
size: 408736 Kbytes
bytes per sector: 512

This prevents me from creating the mirror of HPSP on slice 3. The usual dd fails with an I/O error :

# dd if=/dev/rdisk/disk12_p3 of=/dev/rdisk/disk10_p3 bs=1024k
I/O error
400+0 records in
399+1 records out

My question is : should I use the same procedure for mirroring boot disk on 11.31 as with 11.23 ? Is it a known problem ?

Thanks for your help !
JM

Re: Idisk on 11.31 : strange sizes

Torsten. — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 04:47:06 GMT

Strange.
Did you compare the other partitions too?

With the "normal" installation process for HPSP this shouldn't be a problem. You may try to use efi_cp instead.

BTW, I would think about to use the integrated RAID functionality to mirror the boot drive.

Re: Idisk on 11.31 : strange sizes

Torsten. — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 04:48:40 GMT

Forgot this:

should I use the same procedure for mirroring boot disk on 11.31 as with 11.23 ?

Yes, I did it many times.
But you should use diskxx and disk_py instead of cxtydz!

Re: Idisk on 11.31 : strange sizes

Jean Mesquida_1 — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 05:18:58 GMT

Thanks for your answer !

I forgot to mention that this system has been ignited with a June 2007 11.31 version of HP-UX.

Sizes are as follows on the primary disk :

size: 511968 Kbytes
size: 70765568 Kbytes
size: 409600 Kbytes

And on the secondary :

size: 511968 Kbytes
size: 70766592 Kbytes
size: 408736 Kbytes

I first partitioned the disk using /dev/rdsk/c2t1d0 but, as per your answer, retried using /dev/rdisk/disk10 : the result is the same.

It seems I don't have any RAID controller on this RX2660 (no /dev/ciss... special file ans ioscan doesn't list RAID HBA).

I'll try efi_cp.
Thanks
JM

Re: Idisk on 11.31 : strange sizes

Torsten. — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 05:21:05 GMT

How about the size of the disk at all?

RAID:

Look for "sasdx" devices - this is the integrated SAS RAID controller.

Re: Idisk on 11.31 : strange sizes

Torsten. — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 05:23:53 GMT

ioscan should look like this:

escsi_ctlr 0 0/4/1/0 sasd CLAIMED INTERFACE HP PCI
/PCI-X SAS MPT Adapter
/dev/sasd0
ext_bus 1 0/4/1/0.0.0 sasd_vbus CLAIMED INTERFACE SAS Dev
ice Interface
...
target 19 0/4/1/0.0.0.1 tgt CLAIMED DEVICE
disk 2 0/4/1/0.0.0.1.0 sdisk CLAIMED DEVICE
HP IR Volume
/dev/dsk/c1t1d0 /dev/rdsk/c1t1d0
/dev/dsk/c1t1d0s1 /dev/rdsk/c1t1d0s1
/dev/dsk/c1t1d0s2 /dev/rdsk/c1t1d0s2
/dev/dsk/c1t1d0s3 /dev/rdsk/c1t1d0s3

This is an integrated RAID.
You will notice the "HP IR Volume".

Re: Idisk on 11.31 : strange sizes

Eric SAUBIGNAC — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 06:08:38 GMT

Hi Juan,

some more informations about sas controleur, not about your specific problem, sorry :-(.

1) At EFI level you can access a configuration menu of sas adapter with "drvcfg -s" and manage IR Volumes

2) At OS shell you can use 3 commands sasdiag, saslist and sasmgr (/opt/sas/bin).

For example you can issue the following command :

root@cduxliv1:/ >saslist get_info ctrl sasd
H/W Path: 0/4/1/0 HBA DSF: /dev/sasd0

then ...

root@cduxliv1:/ >sasmgr get_info -D /dev/sasd0 -q raid

Wed Jul 25 12:51:03 2007

---------- LOGICAL DRIVE 5 ----------

Raid Level : RAID 1
Volume sas address : 0x8e064cf787fc06f
Device Special File : /dev/rdsk/c1t0d0
Raid State : OPTIMAL
Raid Status Flag : ENABLED
Raid Size : 139236
Rebuild Rate : 0.00 %
Rebuild Progress : 100.00 %

Participating Physical Drive(s) :

SAS Address Enc Bay Size(MB) Type State

0x5000c500040728a5 1 8 140014 SECONDARY ONLINE
0x5000c50004074d45 1 7 140014 PRIMARY ONLINE
>

With sasmgr you can create, delete, manage LUNs.

Hope this will help
Eric

Re: Idisk on 11.31 : strange sizes

Jean Mesquida_1 — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 06:56:24 GMT

Hi Enrique y muchas gracias por las informaciones ;-)

If I try to convert my existing vg00 from one single disk to one RAID1 entity, will this be a destructive process ?

Do I have to create a golden image of my server before ?

Thanks
JM

Re: Idisk on 11.31 : strange sizes

Eric SAUBIGNAC — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 07:30:09 GMT

Regardless wether it will be a destructive process or not, oeuf corse you MUST do an ignite image before.

Well, if you build the IR volume with "drvcfg -s" the interface will probably ask you if you want to preserve data. I have tried it once ... and i have lost all my data. I am not sure of what i did exactly, maybe i didn't understood the question (you can notice english is not my mother tong ;-), but the result was there. I didn't spent time to understand what has happened and i came immediatly in an ignite recovery process.

So, you should not rely on a non destructive migration process from single disk to RAID volume, unless someone in this forum can help you in this way.

Eric

Re: Idisk on 11.31 : strange sizes

Jean Mesquida_1 — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 03:45:07 GMT

After contacting HP, the workaround is to allow 401MB for the HPSP partition.

The partition file then looks like this :

3
EFI 500MB
HPUX 100%
HPSP 401MB

Luckily, the HPUX partition remains equal on both disks :

Primary disk :
s1: 511968 Kbytes
s2: 70765568 Kbytes
s3: 409600 Kbytes

Secondary disk :
s1: 511968 Kbytes
s2: 70765568 Kbytes
s3: 409760 Kbytes

The HPSP is a bit more than 400MB, which is fine for accepting HPSP from the primary disk, copied by dd.

It works... but it's only a workaround : I'm waiting for an explanation from HP.
HTH
JM

Re: Idisk on 11.31 : strange sizes

Jean Mesquida_1 — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 05:34:55 GMT

Along HP support, it seems to be the standard behaviour of idisk, depending on disk driver implementation.

The documents mentioning idisk should be updated to reflect this information on ITRC.

The only solution is to configure the sizes of partitions a bit larger as needed (1 MB increment).

Re: Idisk on 11.31 : strange sizes

Jean Mesquida_1 — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 05:38:33 GMT

The partition file has to be configured this way with SAS Disks on RX2660 platform, even if the expected size of HPSP is 400 MB :

3
EFI 500MB
HPUX 100%
HPSP 401MB