fsadm : should be a character device

[Franky Leeuwerck_2]

Hello HP-UX people,

I'd like to use the /home file system as a large filesystem, but I get this message :
should be a character device .
The system is HP-UX 11.23 Itanium version 2.

Anyone an idea ?
I must leave the office now and can only reply within 12-14 hours, but thanks in advance.

Franky

# cat fstab
# System /etc/fstab file. Static information about the file systems
# See fstab(4) and sam(1M) for further details on configuring devices.
/dev/vg00/lvol3 / vxfs delaylog 0 1
/dev/vg00/lvol1 /stand vxfs tranflush 0 1
/dev/vg00/lvol4 /tmp vxfs delaylog 0 2
/dev/vg00/lvol5 /home vxfs delaylog 0 2
/dev/vg00/lvol6 /opt vxfs delaylog 0 2
/dev/vg00/lvol7 /usr vxfs delaylog 0 2
/dev/vg00/lvol8 /var vxfs delaylog 0 2
# bdf | grep home
/dev/vg00/lvol5 15360000 8896 15231184 0% /home
# /usr/sbin/fsadm -F hfs -o largefiles /dev/vg00/lvol5
fsadm: /dev/vg00/lvol5 should be a character device

[Patrick Wallek]

The first problem I see with your command is that you are specifying an HFS filesystem when it is really VxFS.

If you have online JFS installed, try this:

# fsadm -F vxfs -o largefiles /home

[Jeff Schussele]

Hi Franky,

Wrong FS-type - use

/usr/sbin/fsadm -F vxfs -o largefiles /dev/vg00/lvol5

And don't forget to add largefiles to it's entry in /etc/fstab.

HTH,
Jeff

[Sridhar Bhaskarla · Accepted solution]

Hi,

With your options, it appears as a HFS filesystem which means you cannot use OnlineJFS. So you will need to unmount /home and then run fsadm on the character device.

#umount /home (you may have to bring down the processes that access /home)
#fsadm -F hfs -o largefiles /dev/vg00/rlvol5

-Sri

[Sridhar Bhaskarla]

Hmmm.. looking it again I thought you knew it for sure as HFS. Obviously not. You fstab says it as vxfs as rightly pointed by Pete and Jeff. YOu will need to unmount /home to do it if you don't have onlineJFS.

-Sri

[Franky Leeuwerck_2]

Hello everyone,

I must confess I did not check the filesystem type of /home. Thanks for helping me.

With
/usr/sbin/fsadm -F vxfs -o largefiles /dev/vg00/lvol5
I got this error :
vxfs fsadm: /dev/vg00/lvol5 is not the root inode of a vxfs file system

But another ITRC thread pointed out I should use 'rlvol5' instead of 'lvol5' .

Regards,
Franky

[Robert-Jan Goossens]

Goodmorning Franky,

This depends on OnlineJFS installed or not.

If You have OnlineJFS installed you could use the
# fsadm -F vxfs -o largefiles /home
or
# fsadm -F vxfs -o largefiles /dev/vg00/lvol5

without umounting the filesystem. If you don't have OnlineJFS installed you will have to unmount the filesystem and use the raw logical volume file
# umount /home
# fsadm -F vxfs -o largefiles /dev/vg00/rlvol5

Regards,
Robert-Jan

[Franky Leeuwerck_2]

Hi Robert-Jan,

Thanks also for your feedback.
The problem is solved.

Franky