SecurePath 3.0d for solaris (SUN)

[Lan_4]

Is anyone using SecurePath 3.0D on solaris server? It did really bad to my testing machine.
I jumpstarted the server with two QLA2310F HBAs in solaris 9. Then I installed the SecurePath (SP) 3.0D full version on it. I tested the failover and it worked just fine. However, after I removed the 3 packages, CPQswsp, HPfcraid, and QLA2300, which all come with SP3.0D, using pkgrm, my server is not bootable anymore. The console
shows:
Rebooting with command: boot -r
Boot device: /pci@1f,4000/scsi@3/disk@1,0:a File and args: -r
boot: cannot find misc/sparcv9/krtld
boot: error loading interpreter (misc/sparcv9/krtld)
Elf64 read error.
boot failed
Enter filename [/platform/sun4u/kernel/sparcv9/unix]:
Elf64 read error.
boot failed

Any idea what went wrong ?

Thanks.

[SAKET_5]

Lan,

Agreed that I have not had the best experience with Secure Path on Solaris, but in your case it has done nothing WRONG!

What was your intention behind removing those three packages? CPQswsp provides one of the Secure Path's abstraction layer drivers "swsp" I think, QLA2300 provides the FCA driver (qlogic 2300 cards)....!!!!If you really need to uninstall Secure Path, please follow the uninstall instructions contained in "Secure Path V3.0D Install Guide" found at hp.com

Hope it was of help and consider assigning points to the responses.

Good luck.

[Lan_4]

Thanks.
It was done for testing purpose.
However, I still don't understand that removing thirth party software would damage the OS or kernel. Securepath is for multipathing, while
QLA2300 is the HBA driver for Qlogic 2300 HBAs.
If they are not needed, it should have no problem to remove them. The doc for removing securepath is through "pkgrm CPQswsp".

Lan

[SAKET_5]

Lan,

are you not booting off the SAN disk, i.e. via the HBA driver to acces storage to its boot LUN?

[Lan_4]

No. I am not booting from SAN disk.
We only use the LUN from EVA5000 as oracle
filesystem.

[Spike Burkhardt]

Lan,

I'm no expert at this but it appears that this is a boot disk issue, not a secure path issue (although I have **plenty** of issues with Secure Path for Solaris! ). To test out whether it's a Secure Path issue I'd try to boot standalone (boot -s) and see if it comes up. If it still has problems, then I think root ( / ) might have a problem. Perhaps some kind of kernel corruption or boot disk error which would cause the read error. The whole thing is that Solaris can't even boot let alone execute the rc2.d scripts. The other possibility I can think of is that there is at least 1 Secure Path startup script in /etc/rcS.d called S89spinit. See if it still there. Obviously if it's still there remove it.

spik

[Lan_4]

Thanks for your response. I could not
boot at all, even -s. I booted it from my
spare root, and found out that the whole
dir of /kernel/misc/sparcv9 was gone.

Installation of SP3.0D, put a file "path"
under /kernel/misc/sparcv9, I am wondering
either pre-remove or post-remove of CPQswsp or
HPfcraid did something wrong while removed
"path" from /kernel/misc/sparcv9.

I don't think it is my boot disk problem. When
I dd the root partition of spare root to the real root disk, it came up back just fine, which made me think that the removing processing did something bad to the system files at /.

[Craig_83]

Hi Lan,

I have seen a similar occurrence on a Sun Enterprise 6000 system - not quite the same error message... but the same end result. After booting from CD, it appeared that the path-to-inst and sd.conf files were incorrect. There is a procedure on page 120 of the SecurePath 3.0D installation guide for removing SP that says to run config.sh from /opt/HPfcraid/bin to regenerate the sd.conf. I haven't tested it, but it seems like performing this procedure after SP is removed and then removing the other components might get around this issue.

Regards,
Craig

[Lan_4]

Thanks. My test box is a Netra t 1120/1125.
To regenerate /kernel/drv/sd.conf is
to make sure the fabric channel disks can still
be seen (in single path mode though) when systems boots. I modify sd,conf (with the combination of command update_drv a lot on some of our solaris 9 systems) so that the servers without securepath installed can still use the LUN from eva5000. I still don't understand why /kernel/misc/sparv9 was removed. That dir has many files that have nothing to do HP stuff.

[Carl_97]

You are not alone.

I installed SP3.0D on a series of machines about a year ago, and (almost at random) the installationn came out crappy - for some reason no HBA cards were not found. When this happened I simply removed the packages in the appropriate order rebooted and reinstalled them. That usually worked.
The funny thing is that two different machines (same model, same os) could have different outcome from the installation - all documented patches applied of course.

Then just a month ago I had to go through this proceedure on a SFV240, not in production *relief*, and got exactly the same shi*t you've experienced.
We decided to use another SAN instead.

And today (2 hours ago) I heard about yet another V240 where this happened with SP3.0D.

To anyone reading this I'd recommend taking a full backup just before attempting to install SP.

To me it's evident it has to do with SP.

[Lan_4]

Have you heard any thing from HP ?
Hope HP can give us an explaination or/and
upgrade of SecurePath.

[florence mathon lermusi]

Hello,

In fact, I don't know what is the model of your server but you can get some issues with qlogic fc drivers... Some model of SUN servers have FC internal hard disks, and this hard disks are driven by a qlc driver, so depending on the way you removed your QLA package you could have removed by mistake some needed components or driver references needed to access to your boot disk...

Potential conflicts between fc drivers to drive the qla hba is one of the reason why the packaging has been changed with the SP 3.0D release. Before that QLA2300 driver was packaged with the OS kit, now it is inthe SP package...

[florence mathon lermusi]

In fact the installation/deinstallation procedures for SP 3.0D have been also changed

[Lan_4]

The system model is:
sun4u Netra t 1120/1125
It does not have internal FC drives. Solaris
driver, qlc, is not needed, and not installed.

[Carl_97]

Since my post I've heard there is a SP3.0E. Guess that one is preferred over 3.0D, and this might solve this issue for all of us, regardless of machine model.

I have not yet had chance to verify though.

[Carl_97]

I'll check with my "contact" if that really was a 3.0E for solaris, I've not been able to find it downloadable anywhere. MIght have been false information. Will post again once I know for sure.

[Gary Ray_2]

In reference to SecurePath, Solaris and pkgrm making the system unbootable; there is a Sun Alert document # 57736 that describes this issue in detail. The problem occurs with SecurePath and Solaris (v7 thru 10) at specific patch levels.