cant boot and missing chroot_lvmdisk

[Bob Bolger]

We have 11.11 and with mirrored system disks.
/root was full and the system was rebooted but would not come back up. We tried alt and pri which did not work. We tried booting from Sept 03 release media but chroot_lvmdisk was not there. We tried to mkfs -H 0/0/1/1.2... but that did not work either.
Our last option that I am aware of is to
1. pull the mirror out,
2. recover from iginte which is 30 days old,
3. figure a way to mount the mirror that has full root and free up space,
4. pull out the newly restored system disk,
5. boot from the just freed up old root disk.
Unless someone has a better suggestion.

[Borislav Perkov]

Hi,
Maybe you could try reboot from HP-UX Core media like it is described in Ignite-UX Administration Guide (B2355-90834) in Chapter 11 System Recovery, section Expert recovery using the core media. There you can use shell commands to free /root partition.

Regards,
Borislav

[Frederic Sevestre]

Hi,

Did you tried to boot in maintenance level to fix the space problem.

bo pri
interact with ipl --> yes
hpux -lm

Regards,
Frederic

[Bob Bolger]

I have tried to boot from core but chroot_lvmdisk is not on my core CD. Also, the mkfs version I have does not support -H so I cant create device files for the lvols. I also tried bo pri but it too has the same problems.

[Bharat Katkar]

HI,
Try booting the system into single user mode.
Halt the system at boot process to enter PDC.

Main menu> bo pri
interact with ipl --> yes
ISL> hpux -is

See if that works and then try remmoving/trimming files.

Regards,

[Sundar_7]

Hi Bob,

There is no chroot_lvmdisk in 11.11 boot CD.

Following this procedure to mount the root and stand

Exit to the recovery shell

# loadfile ioscan
# ioscan -fnkC disk

If the root and stand are LVM logical volumes then the device files for the logical volumes will be in the form of c0t1d0s2lvm and c0t1d0s1lvm.

Load fsck and mount the filesystem

# loadfile /sbin/fs/vxfs/fsck
# loadfile /sbin/fs/hfs/fsck
# loadfile /sbin/fs/vxfs/mount
# loadfile /sbin/fs/hfs/mount

# /sbin/fs/vxfs/fsck /dev/rdsk/c0t1d0s2lvm
# /sbin/fs/hfs/fsck /dev/rdsk/c0t1d0s1lvm

# /sbin/fs/vxfs/mount /dev/dsk/c0t1d0s2lvm /ROOT
# /sbin/fs/hfs/mount /dev/dsk/c0t1d0s1lvm /ROOT/stand

# chroot /ROOT /sbin/sh

-- Sundar

[Bob Bolger]

Following on Sundar's note, I am able to boot into the recovery shell and mount s2lvm and s1lvm. But they appear to be the same thing.

When I use ll to see what is there, they both look like /stand.

I have repeated the process a couple times and am unsure what to make of this.

The only other thing of note was that s2lvm is hfs (I had to run hfs fsck).

[Sundar_7 · Accepted solution]

Bob,

Alternatively, you can mount root by using the following procedure

1) Run a recovery shell
2) Recover a unbootable system
3) make sure the correct bootable device is displayed
4) select the options to mount root
5) exit to the shell
6) loadfile chroot
7) chroot /ROOT /sbin/sh

-- Sundar

[Bob Bolger]

Running the recovery shell worked and I was able to mount the root volume that was full.
I removed the garbage data and the rest of the disk looked fine but still cant boot from that disk. I get error "not executable".
Perhaps I need to mkboot or somthing.

[generic_1]

I have the feeling your disk was not made bootable. Run a lvlnboot -v and see if you have the boot string setup on your disk :). Also if you have a disk fill up in the future and you have something like autosys loaded on the system that could launch things as root you could use that to launch a cleanup job that could get you enough space to login. Also you may want to check the boot information on all of your server so this does not cause you problems in the future.

mkboot -a "hpux -lq /stand/vmunix" /dev/rdsk/c0t1d0

[Sundar_7]

Looks like your vmunix is corrupt or something. It could be your LIF volume as well.

Start with mkboot and if that doesnt help then try booting from a old kernel.

[Bob Bolger]

vmunix and vmunix.prev will not boot.
I have reinstalled from ignite...a few weeks old.
I need to:
1. mount the old root mirror to get stuff onto the new boot disk.
2. get the external lvm disks mounted to the new boot disk.

[Sundar_7]

All the VGs that were active at the time of the ignite tape creation should have got imported automatically. You need not have to import volume groups unless ofcourse if you have any new volume groups added to the system after the creation of ignite tape.

Importing the old root vg and extracting the files should not be difficult.

[Bob Bolger]

Thanks for your help. I have aceived the goal. The lesson, as usual, backup, backup, backup and backup often.