Automatically booting from a mirrored root drive

[Michael Leis]

I have a K420 server running HP-UX 11.0 and Mirror/UX which is successfully maintaining a mirror of my root disk (both primary & mirror disks are in a jamacia box). The server will boot successfully from either disk -- HOWEVER it will not boot from the "alternate" location (a.k.a. the mirror drive) unless I issue the BO ALT command... even with the primary drive physically removed from the system. I have tried all combinations of the AutoBoot and AutoSearch settings but nothing will get it to automatically boot from the alternate/mirror if the primary is dead/missing. Any help will be greatly appreciated!

[S.K. Chan]

Just a couple of days ago, same symptom you're experiencing, apparently if you wait long enough (like 1 minute) it'll eventually boot from your alt path. Check this thread ..

http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,,0x0d751cc6003bd6118fff0090279cd0f9,00.html

[Michael Leis]

Going back and watching it again, you are right... after a moment it appears to try to boot (I suspect from the mirror/ALT disk), BUT it fails and shows a "WARN A008" error and says "Bad LIF Magic".

I setup this mirror using info from: http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,,0x73c853921f1ad5118fef0090279cd0f9,00.html

The WARN A008 I suspect is caused by the primay disk being physically removed... that seems reasonable.

Why it has this Bad LIF Magic I don't know -- it will manually boot with a BO ALT.

I did an lslif on the primary disk and it showed:
ODE MAPFILE SYSLIB CONFIGDATA SLMOD SLDEV SLDRIVERS SLSCSI MAPPER IOTEST PERFVER PVCU SSINFO HPUX ISL AUTO LABEL.

I did an lslif on the mirror disk and it showed:
ISL AUTO HPUX PAD LABEL

If I need the other files shown on the primary disk lslif I don't know how exactly to get them there -- but I'm also not sure those others actually matter.

[Christopher McCray_1]

Hello,

What you have on the mirror drive I believe is the minimum you need. Run the following for the mirror drive:

# lifcp /dev/rdsk/c#t#d#:AUTO -
and make sure the contents of the AUTO file has "hpux -lq" in it. the "low quorum" option is for mirror sets of two disks. If not, then:

# mkboot -a "hpux -lq" /dev/rdsk/c#t#d#

Then see if you are good.

Hope this helps
Chris

[Sanjay_6]

Hi,

Bad lif magik means your alternate disk is not bootable. Did you make the hard disk bootbale. Did you put the lif info on the alt disk. Do a "lvlnboot -v /dev/vg00" and check and make sure the 2nd / alternate disk is shown as bootable over there.

Hope this helps.

Regds

[Patrick Wessel · Accepted solution]

Michael,
The way a system handles a boot attempt from a non-existing pri path depends on the server model.
K- and D-Classes do NOT boot from the alternate path but from the factory default. I found the following in the D-Class documentation:

"If both Autoboot and Autosearch are enabled, an attempt will be made to boot from the primary stable storage boot path. If the device is not present or does not contain a valid IPL image, then the default boot path is searched for a valid IPL; If search fails and there is a valid console, control is passed to the Boot Console Handler. If the search is successful, the IPL image will be loaded and control is passed to it."

[S.K. Chan]

From the lifls I can see you are missing a whole bunch of LIF files related to diagnostics and yes they are crucial. They are the ODE (Offline Diagnostics). Run this to get them copied to the disk ..

# ll /usr/sbin/diag/lif/updatediaglif
==> this file should exist if you got Online Diagnistics installed.
# mkboot -b /usr/sbin/diag/lif/updatediaglif -p ISL -p AUTO -p HPUX -p PAD -p LABEL /dev/rdsk/cXtXdX
==> if you're running 64-bit use file "updatediaglif2" instead.
# lifls -l /dev/rdsk/cXtXdX
==> now they should show up

[Michael Leis]

Thanks to all of you for your suggestions...

Chris - I did have the -lq in place, though you're right that it wouldn't work w/o that... been there done that once already. Thanks

Sanjay - I had confirmed a couple of times previously with that command that it was bootable -- that's part of what frustrated me. It would boot -- just not automatically. Thanks for the suggestion.

Patrick - You hit the nail on the head! Isn't that interesting in a painful way. Oh well... the system is just going to rely on more human intervention than I really wanted, but I can live with it if I have to. Thanks for solving this mystery... never thought about that. One of those things that makes me wonder what the engineers were thinking when they developed the system that way.

S.K. Chan - Thank you! I now have a complete set of the LIF files on my Mirror... that makes me much more comfortable.

Again, to each of you THANK YOU VERY MUCH!