LV extend fails

[M.A.]

Hi all,

Im kindda new to hpux, so extending the LV is best to do with SAM util.
My current lv is 200MB, when i tried to put a new value to 512MB, the error message as below appeared.

"Not enough free physical extents available. Logical volume /dev/vg00/lvol3 could not be extended."
"Failure possible caused by contiguous allocation policy."
"Failure possible caused by strict allocation policy"

I already do 'vgdisplay -v vg00' and there is 386 Free PE.

[Stefan Farrelly]

lvol3 is / which is a contiguous filesystem so you will not be able to extend it very easily at all. The best way to extend it is to install HP's free software called IGNITE, make a backup of all of vg00 to DDS/DAT tape, then boot from the tape and use an interactive menu to set the size of lvol3 to your new size, then it will reload all of vg00 with the new sizes. Still - its a big job to make an ignite tape and restore from it if youre not familiar with it.

[Santosh Nair_1]

Here is a forum thread on extending the root partition...basically your best bet would be do a make_recovery (or make_tape_recovery) and resize your filesystems.

http://forums.itrc.hp.com:80/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,1150,0x77a8e7613948d5118fef0090279cd0f9,00.html

-Santosh

[linuxfan]

Hi Jack,

200MB for / filesystem is normally enough, looks like you have other files/directories which are taking up lot of space, if i were you i would see if i can move some of those directories to a different filesystem before increasing /. You could use "du -x / | sort -n" to see the disk usage for files/dirs in /.

Now / has to be a contiguous and cannot be increased using SAM.
To increase / or /stand, the general consensus and a tested procedure is to install ignite/UX (free software from HP) from
http://www.software.hp.com/products/IUX/download.html

create a disaster recovery tape (ignite image) of your system using make_tape_recovery or make_recovery

boot the server using the ignite tape/image - and interrupt it before it starts restoring.

go to advanced installation and choose your new sizes for your filesystems

This will rebuild the system with the new size for /, increase /stand if necessary

You might want to look at the thread
http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,1150,0x377dabe92dabd5118ff10090279cd0f9,00.html

for more information on ignite/UX, refer to
http://www.software.hp.com/products/IUX/docs.html

But if i were you, i would see why is / (200 MB) has such a high usage and if possible move non-os related data to a different filesystem.

Also read up ignite/UX, since it would be helpful for you in the future.

-HTH
Ramesh

[Sanjay_6]

Hi Jack,

you cannot increase the size of /dev/vg00/lvol3 as this is the root volume. To increase the size of this volume, you have to reinstall the OS. At the time of reinstallation you can decide to resize your volumes. you can take a ignite backup of your OS ans reinstall the OS using that backup.

the benefit of using ignite is that you won't have to reinstall the other application, patches that you already have on the system.

hope this helps.

thanks

[Patrick Wallek]

The real question to ask is why do you want to make your / LV so big? 512MB is a bit big for /. The / LV is one of those that should not ever change drastically in size. If you are running out of space, look for 'core' files and any other large file that is strange.

The usual suspect for filling up / is mis-typing a device file for a tape drive so that you get a file in /dev/rmt called 'om' or 'omn' rather than the usual 0m or 0mn.

I would look for the reason / is filling up before extending it so much.

[AUJ]

I think, 200MB should be enough for / filesystem. Please check some files/directories which taking up lots of space, using "du -s * | sort -rn | more" then if you found a huge directory and if it is that important and need it to be in that path, maybe you could just create a new logical volume, then mount that directory to that newlv, atleast from there you're already occupying another disk and not / filesystem.

[Shahul · Accepted solution]

Hi

Extending root is not so risky, If U have free space just after lvol3. If U have lvol4 created after lvol3, then U can't.

To achive this I will give U one procedure, If it is acceptable to U, then proceed with this.

First take the backup of lvol4. Then reboot the system. Go to ISL prompt and type like this

ISL>hpux -lm

Now system will come to LVM maintanence mode.

Now we are going to remove lvol4.
#lvremove /dev/vg00/lvol4 (I mean by lvol4 is the lvol just after root)
#lvextend -L 512 /dev/vg00/lvol3
#extendfs /dev/vg00/rlvol3

I hope U have enough space in vg00. Now create lvol4
#lvcreate -L -n lvol4 /dev/vg00
#newfs -F vxfs /dev/vg00/rlvol4

#vgchange -a y vg00
#bdf

Checkup the size of each volumes
Now restore the backup of lvol4.

Best of luck

Shahul

Restart the machine