exporting a disk

[Jeremey Weeks]

I have a disk I wish to move from one server to another (with the data intact). The disk is divided up into several logical volumes on vg01.

I planned to run
vgchange -a n /dev/vg01

and then

vgexport -m /tmp/vg01.map -s /dev/vg01

to create the map file.

however, when I run the vgchange I get the following:
# vgchange -a n /dev/vg01
vgchange: Couldn't deactivate volume group "/dev/vg01":
Device busy

I've tried fuser -k on the device and on the individual file systems and still get the same error. HP support told me to umount the filesystems. I attempted this and didn't get a prompt back the first time I tried it. I can't kill the umount process and bdf hangs when I run it.
can I just unhook the disks, attach them to the new server and run the following?

#mkdir /dev/vgXY (the new volume group)
#mknod /dev/vgXY/group c 64 0xXY0000
#vgimport vgXY /dev/dsk/cCtTdD (the disk)
#vgchange ???a y vgXY
#vgcfgbackup vgXY
#mkdir /X
#mount /dev/vgXY/lvol1 /X

[Duncan Edmonstone · Accepted solution]

Yes you can... but

-You may find some problems with the file systems when you try to mount them, as they haven't been unmounted cleanly (some data might not have been flushed to disk). You will probably need to fsck the file systems before mounting... if the file systems are VxFS there's a good chance they'll be OK though.

-it won't sort out the problem on the server the disks have been pulled from... also if there are any other disks on the same SCSI bus (assuming they are attached via SCSI) as the disks you are going to remove, there is a *small* chance of causing a bus reset which could upset your otherwise running disks...

HTH

Duncan