linux multipath and EVA 5000

[Jose Molina]

Hello,

I've been trying to set up linux multipath to an EVA 5000. I've been reading most of the info on this, and i think i have it working, but i'm having one little problem that seems to have happened to other people, and i've been unable to solve it.
I have 2 disks, with 2 paths to an HSV110, active/pasive, so theres always one of the paths that has failed/faulty state (but enabled). The thing is, every poll interval (default 5 secs) I get these messages on the syslog:

[root@xxx ~]# multipath -l
3600508b400012e150001000000af0000
[size=1 GB][features="0"][hwhandler="0"]
\_ round-robin 0 [active]
\_ 1:0:0:1 sda 8:0 [active][ready]
\_ round-robin 0 [enabled]
\_ 1:0:1:1 sdc 8:32 [failed][faulty]

3600508b400012e150001000000b40000
[size=1 GB][features="0"][hwhandler="0"]
\_ round-robin 0 [enabled]
\_ 1:0:0:2 sdb 8:16 [failed][faulty]
\_ round-robin 0 [active]
\_ 1:0:1:2 sdd 8:48 [active][ready]

[root@xxx ~]# tail /var/log/messages
kernel: Device sdc not ready.
kernel: Device sdb not ready.
kernel: Device sdc not ready.
kernel: Device sdb not ready.
kernel: Device sdc not ready.
kernel: Device sdb not ready.

This is supposed to be happening because "multibus" was used in multipath.conf, but i've tried with "failover" and "group_by_prio" with the same results. Also "no_path_retry fail" didn't help. I've tried several configs on multipath.conf, and none got rid of this. Right now, i've put 5 minutes polling interval to "ease" the syslog spamming.

This is on RHEL AS4 U4, 2.6.9-42.ELsmp and Device-mapper 0.4.5 (0.4.7 needs newer kernel. If this solves the problem, I may try upgrading the kernel)

multipath.conf:
defaults {
multipath_tool "/sbin/multipath -v0"
udev_dir /dev
polling_interval 300
default_selector "round-robin 0"
default_path_grouping_policy failover
default_getuid_callout "/sbin/scsi_id -g -u -s /block/%n"
default_prio_callout "/bin/true"
default_features "0"
rr_wmin_io 100
failback immediate
no_path_retry fail
}
[...]
device {
vendor "COMPAQ "
product "HSV110 (C)COMPAQ"
path_grouping_policy failover
getuid_callout "/sbin/scsi_id -g -u -s /block/%n"
path_checker tur
path_selector "round-robin 0"
hardware_handler "0"
#failback 15
rr_weight priorities
no_path_retry fail
}


Any help would be greatly appreciated, there must be someone out there using multipath active/pasive on HSV working!

[Danny Petterson - DK · Accepted solution]

Maybe this is of some help?:

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1052911

[Jose Molina]

Thanks but i've already read that thread. Is the solution that active/pasive is not supported? I don't have an EVA 3000 and the link to the document doesn't work. On the other hand, Device-Mapper documentation has an example on how to configure HSV110 (mine), so i'm guessing it's supported...

[Danny Petterson - DK]

The documentation, for both 4.0A (http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c00581860/c00581860.pdf)and 4.0B, states that active/active, or singlepath is supported. Not active/passive.

[Jose Molina]

Thanks, that was quite clear. I'll have to switch to qlogic and use it's own multipathing software. If someone has anything to add I'll close the thread tomorrow as solved. Thanks!