topic Re: Volume Group Disk Problem in Operating System - HP-UX

Volume Group Disk Problem

Concert Global Networks — Fri, 09 May 2003 16:49:48 GMT

I have a disk in a VG that's in an unavailable PV status. How do I change the status? pvdisplay does show that the PV should be in the VG.

Re: Volume Group Disk Problem

John Meissner — Fri, 09 May 2003 16:55:39 GMT

is the vg active and available?

Re: Volume Group Disk Problem

LucianoCarvalho — Fri, 09 May 2003 16:56:01 GMT

hi,
try to run vgsync.
vgsync vgxx.

regards

Re: Volume Group Disk Problem

James R. Ferguson — Fri, 09 May 2003 16:56:50 GMT

Hi:

A 'vgdisplay' which returns "unavailable" for the VG status suggests an a deactivated volume group. Do:

# vgchange -a y

Regards!

...JRF...

Re: Volume Group Disk Problem

S.K. Chan — Fri, 09 May 2003 16:59:42 GMT

Yeah but what does this shows ..?
# pvdisplay /dev/dsk/cXtXdX|grep Status
It should be consistent with the vgdisplay output ie ..
PV status ===> unavailable
Try to run ..
# vgchange -a y /dev/vgXX
to reactive the VG which this PV resides and see if it helps. If it doesn't you probably got a bad disk. Check with ..
# /etc/diskinfo /dev/rdsk/cXtXdX
and
# ioscan -fnC disk

Re: Volume Group Disk Problem

John Meissner — Fri, 09 May 2003 17:01:27 GMT

james.... S.K...... exactly what I was getting at.

if the volume group is not available you will need to activate it with the vgchange command. I guess I should have included that in my first post

Re: Volume Group Disk Problem

Concert Global Networks — Fri, 09 May 2003 18:41:33 GMT

Hey all,

Thanks for your help so far. Yes, the VG is active and pvdisplay shows the disk unavailable as well. Diskinfo returns a valid disk.I also tried a dd and the records in matched the records out, so I believe the disk is ok. Maybe the VGDA is corrupt? I've also tried deactivating and reactivating with no luck.

Re: Volume Group Disk Problem

James R. Ferguson — Fri, 09 May 2003 18:46:00 GMT

Hi (again):

So let's try reading the LVM header:

if [ "`xd -An -j 8192 -N8 -tc $DEV | xargs" = "L V M R E C 0 1" ]
then
INFO=`xd -An -j8200 -N16 -tx $DEV`
PVID=`echo $INFO | awk ???{print $1 $2}???`
VGID=`echo $INFO | awk ???{print $3 $4}???`
#
echo "$DEV : PVID = $PVID : VGID = $VGID"
else
echo ">>> Can't find LVMREC <<<"
fi

Regards!

...JRF...

Re: Volume Group Disk Problem

Helen French — Fri, 09 May 2003 18:54:37 GMT

What's the status of PV in this command:

# pvdisplay -v pv_name

Re: Volume Group Disk Problem

Concert Global Networks — Fri, 09 May 2003 19:26:39 GMT

Here's what I got after running the pvdisplay -v

root@rcptst01 / # pvdisplay -v /dev/dsk/c0t0d0
--- Physical volumes ---
PV Name /dev/dsk/c0t0d0
VG Name /dev/vgCPE
PV Status unavailable
Allocatable yes
VGDA 2
Cur LV 20
PE Size (Mbytes) 4
Total PE 38262
Free PE 47
Allocated PE 38215
Stale PE 0
IO Timeout (Seconds) default

... and so on. It did give the logical volumes but I wanted to keep this message short. James, the script is just hanging now...

Re: Volume Group Disk Problem

Helen French — Fri, 09 May 2003 19:59:08 GMT

The unavailable PV status comes only when the communication fails between LVM and the disk. It can be either a HDD problem or LVM structure issue. From your outputs it's look like the HDD is working fine (check again the output of ioscan, diskinfo, dd, stm etc).

If you are sure that the disk is fine, then consider doing a vgcfgrestore to this specific disk:

# man vgcfgrestore

That will restore the VG structure back to the disk.

Re: Volume Group Disk Problem

Helen French — Fri, 09 May 2003 20:02:12 GMT

Again, IMPORTANT: make sure that you have a clean backup of all the file systems and data on this disk and the VG before changing anything!

Re: Volume Group Disk Problem

Michael Tully — Fri, 09 May 2003 20:10:53 GMT

A simple test of the disk should tell us something.

What does this do:

dd if=/dev/dsk/c0t0d0 of=/dev/null bs=1024k

Re: Volume Group Disk Problem

Helen French — Fri, 09 May 2003 20:20:38 GMT

Michael,

First, congratulations on your new hat!

He checked the dd output and said it was okay on an earlier post.

Look back ... do not drink too much to celebrate your new hat level =))

Re: Volume Group Disk Problem

T G Manikandan — Sat, 10 May 2003 04:47:24 GMT

I doubt some problem with the disk

With VG activated and PV status unavailable I would first suggest to check your
/var/adm/syslog/syslog.log for any scsi errors on the disk.
Also do check for the latest SCSI patches for the system.

Re: Volume Group Disk Problem

Concert Global Networks — Mon, 12 May 2003 15:04:12 GMT

Hey all,

First of all, thanks for your help! vgcfgrestore is hanging. I've included a file with an excerpt of the syslog file. The latest XSWGR1100 patch bundle installed is B.11.00.49.3

Re: Volume Group Disk Problem

Concert Global Networks — Mon, 12 May 2003 15:06:58 GMT

Oh, by the way, path 8/8.8.0
.255.0.0.0
is the path to the disk in question.

Re: Volume Group Disk Problem

S.K. Chan — Mon, 12 May 2003 15:48:35 GMT

Take a look at my answer here. Somewhat the same scenario and the vgexport/vgimport seems to solve the problem.
http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,,0xe50c237a4bc6d611abdb0090277a778c,00.html
Let us know if you have any question on that.

Re: Volume Group Disk Problem

T G Manikandan — Tue, 13 May 2003 02:15:52 GMT

Please revert on the output of

#vgdisplay -v /dev/vg2
Do check the count of Cur PV and Act PV.
#vgdisplay -v /dev/vg1
#strings /etc/lvmtab
#ioscan -fnC disk

Please post the output

Thanks

Re: Volume Group Disk Problem

John Dvorchak — Tue, 13 May 2003 06:09:42 GMT

This sounds eriely familiar to me. I had the exact same problem but the disk was on an EMC array. It seems that One, I should not have seen the power fail message and two I should not have seen the "can't write to the PVDA". A call to EMC provided me with a utility that repaired or masked the bad PVDA and I was able to deactivate the VG and vgcfgrestore the disk back into the VG. Status is now good. You didn't mention if this is a locally attached disk or a disk in a SAN etc.