lifcp fails with interesting error returned

[Gerald_2]

I executed the below command on server sleepy(HPUX 10.20):

lifcp -r -K 2 -T -12278 MAN3184MC.HP01.frm DFDUTILlif.SCSI.DISPOSAL:MAN18MC01

and this is its result:

lifcp: Cannot create MAN18MC01 ; no space on the LIF volume
Have you ever seen this error? I expect to have the "wrapped" firmware file
added to the lifvol, but it fails and returns
the above message.

Thanks,

gcp

[Frank Slootweg]

A LIF volume has a certain size which is set when it is created. See the "-v" option of lifinit(1). You can display the size of the existing LIF volume volume with "lifls -l". The "data size" number is the number of 256-byte blocks.

[Gerald_2]

Thank you. Is there a way of increasing the size given the original LIF volume? Do you
know why when I did a "lifrm" from the LIF
volume of four files there was still no room
reported in the LIF volume to "lifcp" files
that were smaller than the ones removed from
it?

gcp

[Anthony deRito]

Gerald,

The LIF area is a primitive, flat file system that holds boot utilities. It always has a size of 2MB. What happens when you run:

lifls -l [char device file of boot disk]

It should look something like this:

volume ISL10 data size 7984 directory size 8 96/05/28 04:10:13
filename type start size implement created
===============================================================
ISL -12800 584 240 0 96/05/28 04:10:13
AUTO -12289 824 1 0 96/05/28 04:10:13
HPUX -12928 832 848 0 96/05/28 04:10:13
PAD -12290 1680 1652 0 96/05/28 04:10:14
LABEL BIN 3336 8 0 00/07/27 16:04:35

What do you see in the "size" column. If you removed all of the LIF utilities, then there should not be any listed and you should have 2MB available. Add up the size column of the ones that are there then subtract it from 2MB. Check out how much you have left.

If things look OK and you have enough room left, you may have a corrupted LIF area. This can easily be rebuilt with the support media.

Also, have you ever been successfull doing this with filenames as yours. "man lif" lists some pretty specific filename conventions.

Hope this helps.

Tony

[Sridhar Bhaskarla]

Increasing the size of LIF on the volume. No. It is fixed when you created the physical volume. If you want to change the default upper bound, you need to user lifinit while creating the PV.

-Sri

[Frank Slootweg]

Gerald,

As Sridhar mentions, you can not increase the size of an existing LIF volume. However both he and Anthony talk about a LIF volume in the boot area on disk, and, as far as I can tell, that is not your (Gerald) case. Your example in your first posting is:

lifcp -r -K 2 -T -12278 MAN3184MC.HP01.frm DFDUTILlif.SCSI.DISPOSAL:MAN18MC01

i.e. both the source file (MAN3184MC.HP01.frm) and the destination LIF volume (DFDUTILlif.SCSI.DISPOSAL), are normal files, not the disk boot area.

As to the no space after a lifrm: LIF is a very simple file system. IIRC, a file is not really removed by lifrm, but just marked as removed. Also LIF files must be contiguous, so if there are two small 'holes', a large file will not fit. IIRC, "lifls" shows what happens when you lifrm files.

The best solution to your problem is to create a new LIF volume (lifinit), copy (lifcp) the files in the old LIF volume to HP-UX files and then copy (lifcp) all files to the new LIF volume (and rename (mv) the LIF volume).

I hope this helps.

Frank

[marc seguin]

Frank is right.
If you delete several files which are not contiguous in the LIF-vol, you can't use the whole free space for a one big file.

And the way he described is the easiest and safest :
use lifinit to create a new LIF-vol
-v to set the size big enough (no limit of 2MB!)
-d to set the file entries large enough
And after, you can directly copy the files you want to preserve from old LIF-vol to new LIF-vol.
And at leas, add the new files, as MAN3184MC.HP01.frm.

marc.