Veritas striped mirror volume is corrupted. Can I newfs without destroying volume?

[TechC]

Hello all,
I have a pretty critical task here. I have a Veritas volume manager volume that has a corrupted filesystem. It is a striped mirror volume. 2 plexes, 36 total disks, 18 per plex. My problem is that when I run fsck on the volume I get the following.

# fsck /dev/vx/rdsk/dbvol
** /dev/vx/rdsk/dbvol
BAD SUPER BLOCK: TRASHED VALUES IN SUPER BLOCK
USE AN ALTERNATE SUPER-BLOCK TO SUPPLY NEEDED INFORMATION;
eg. fsck -o b=# [special ...]
where # is the alternate super block.

I point the fsck to an alternate superblock and fsck runs and corrects the errors. Afterwards I run fsck and the superblock is still thrashed. The filesystem seems to be unsalvageable, So can I simply run newfs on this volume while it is unmounted? I have a good backup and am not concerned with the data. I am trying to avoid destroying and rebuilding the volume and veritas structures.
Thank you
James

[Tim Nelson]

Unless you suspect a physical disk failure, sure you can run newfs and do a restore.

[TechC]

Tim,
Thank you, wow that was quick, OK so I can newfs even while this is mirrored and striped correct? I do not need to detatch a plex or anything like that? Just want to be sure.

Thank you
James

[Andres_13 · Accepted solution]

Hi James,

The worst thing that colud be happen is that you need to recreate the entire structures. I suggest you that do the entire process just in the case of phisical damage on the disk.

If as you say you don't want to rebuild th structures, simply do the newfs without fear.

Regards

[TechC]

Thanks Andres,
A little reassurance is all I needed. I was just hesitant about the newfs, wasn't sure if block size or anything had to be considered. I did run it and the newfs was successfull. Thanks for the reply. Know of any good Veritas books other than the manuals?
I will close this in 15 minutes.

Thanks
James

[Bill Hassell]

newfs is not concerned with the underlying disk layout (stripes, multi-disks, etc). It simply writes a new directory onto the volume. IT simply creates an empty directory (and associated superblocks). All of this assumes that there are no disk errors shown in syslog or cstm reports.

[TechC]

Volume is back online,
Thank you Gentlemen I appreciate the help as always..

James