Make an mirror disk bootable

[Haitham Hamad]

I have my vg00 mirrored but the mirror is not bootable.

lvlnboot -v
Boot Definitions for Volume Group /dev/vg00:
Physical Volumes belonging in Root Volume Group:
/dev/dsk/c0t5d0 (8/4.5.0) -- Boot Disk
/dev/dsk/c1t8d0 (8/8.8.0)
Boot: lvol1 on: /dev/dsk/c0t5d0
/dev/dsk/c1t8d0
Root: lvol3 on: /dev/dsk/c0t5d0
/dev/dsk/c1t8d0
Swap: lvol2 on: /dev/dsk/c0t5d0
/dev/dsk/c1t8d0
Dump: lvol2 on: /dev/dsk/c0t5d0, 0

setboot
Primary bootpath : 8/4.5.0
Alternate bootpath : 8/16/5.0.0

Autoboot is ON (enabled)
Autosearch is ON (enabled)

The alternate bootpath above does not show on the ioscan -funC disk

How can I make my mirror bootable. I can not redo the pvcreate -B here. Will mkboot work by itself.

Thanks in advance
Haitham

[Patrick Wallek]

Did you do the pvcreate -B when you did your mirror the first time? If so then the boot area was created. If not, then you will have to start over.

If you did do the pvcreate -B, then do the following now:

mkboot /dev/rdsk/c?t?d0

mkboot -a "hpux (;0)/stand/vmunix" /dev/rdsk/c?t?d0

That will make your disk bootable.

You have to manually add the disk as the alternate boot path with setboot. You current alternate path is probably your CD drive or a tape drive.

[Rita C Workman · Accepted solution]

Here's a thread I keep handy for making mirror disk bootable....

http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,1150,0x1ffea14d9abcd4118fef0090279cd0f9,00.html

The only thing I do different is that I do not do mine in numerical order but rather mount order.../ lvol3 first then on down...

/rcw

[Haitham Hamad]

Thanks for the quick responses. I inhereted the system recently and don't know if the -B was specified. How can one check that?. What will be the scenario if pvcreate -B was not used when the mirror was created. Thanks again

[Rita C Workman]

If you want to make a disk bootable you have to use the pvcreate -B option.

What -B does is create the physical disk with reserved space for boot related data. Without the -B the physical disk can not be used as a system or boot disk.

Hope this helps,
/rcw

[Patrick Wallek]

One way to check whether or not the -B option was used to create the boot area is to do a 'vgdisplay -v /dev/vg00'. Towards the end of the vgdisplay it will show you the physical volumes in that VG. The 'Total PE' field should match for both disks. If one is greater than the other by 1 then the -B option was not used for a pvcreate.

If that is the case then the thing to do would be to reduce all mirrors off your second disk, reduce it out of the VG and start the mirroring process over again.

[Haitham Hamad]

Thanks again. Looks like I just have to break the mirror and recreate. Really appreciate the input.

H