vxfs: mesg 056: vx_dataioerr

[Arthur Pols]

Hello everybody,

This morning I ran into a message on one of our systems and I have no idea what is causing this and how serious it is.

This is the message (in syslog):

Feb 20 16:41:06 hp7 vmunix: vxfs: mesg 056: vx_dataioerr -
/dev/vg02/lvol1 file system file data read error

I can read and write the file system that is referenced to.
So I can't see if this is a problem or not.

Any suggestions are most welcome (and will be rewarded).

Thanks in advance

Arthur

[Alex Glennie]

These errors are usually due to a hardware failure. Here is some additional
information on these error messages:

Message: 056
WARNING: msgcnt x: vxfs: mesg 056: vx_dataioerr - file system file dataerror

Explanation
------------------

A read or a write error occurred while accessing file data. The message
specifies whether the disk I/O that failed was a read or a write. File data
includes data currently in files and free blocks. If the message is printed
because of a read or write error to a file, another message that includes the
inode number of the file will print. The message maybe printed as the result of
a read or write error to a free block, since some operations allocate an extent
and immediately perform I/O to it. If the I/O fails, the extent is freed and
the operation fails. The message should be accompanied by a message from the
disk driver containing information about the disk I/O error.

Action
---------

Resolve the condition causing the disk error. If the error was the result of a
temporary condition (such as accidentally turning off a disk or a loose cable),
correct the condition. Check for loose cables,etc. If any file data was lost,
restore the files from backups. Determine the file names from the inode number
(see the ncheck (1M) manual page for more information.) If an actual disk error
occurred, make a backup of the file system, replace or reformat the disk
drive, and restore the file system from the backup. Consult the documentation
specific to your system for information on how to recover from disk errors. The
disk driver should have printed a message that may provide more information.


THINGS TO CHECK:
----------------

1) Make sure you have the latest VxFS/LVM patches installed on your system.

2) See if you are able to read from the disk using the following command:

dd if=/dev/dsk/c#t#d# of=/dev/null bs=64k

where c#t#d# is the appropriate disk device file. If you are unable
to read the disk, then it's most likely a disk failure. Contact the
Hardware Response Center for help in further diagnosis and correction of
potential disk failure.

3) Try running a full fsck on the file system:

fsck -F vxfs -y -o full /dev/vg##/lvol##

If you are still unable to access the file system after running fsck,
and a second fsck returns no errors, then use newfs to
recreate the file system and restore the data from backup tape. If this
problem persists, then contact the Hardware Response Center for help in
further diagnosis and correction of potential disk failure.

[Arthur Pols]

Thanks for your reaction Alex.

I had made contact with response centre of HP as well and they had another way of handling my question.
You are talking in hardware (witch sound logical to me), the response centre however advises to install Patch PHKL_17110 (together with PHKL_16751) to solve this problem. In this case I have to take the server offline for a reboot. In your case this isn't necessary. Do you think its necessary to do both (check hardware and install patch) ?

Some more info on the machine (I forgot the first time, sorry) I'm running HP-UX 10.20 and the only thing changed on the machine (for a while) is an update of Sybase 11.9.2. to 11.9.2.4.2 The disk that's complaining contains a dump volume for Sybase.


If you (or anyone else) have some more, please let my know.
I'm eager to learn.

Q.R. Arthur

[James A. Donovan]

The PHKL_16751 patch has many dependencies (PHCO_12922 PHCO_10826 PHNE_13287 PHKL_16957 PHKL_17013 PHKL_17254 PHKL_17858) which will need to be installed if they are not already on your system. I would perform the fsck first, and keep an eye out for any re-occurance of this error.