vPar boot from a Vdisk (EVA 5000)

[Eduardo Chapa]

Hi everyone!

I have a HP 9000 Superdome nPar booting from a Vdisk (A) of an EVA 5000, replicated to another Vdisk (B) on a different EVA via Continous Access.

After simulating a system failure (bringing the nPar down) we are trying to boot a vPAR with the replicated Vdisk (B).

When the vPar was starting up, HP-UX couldn't mount/find /vg00 so boot failed.

Then we tried booting the vPar in Logical Volume Maintenance mode (with /stand/vmunix -lm) and relocating the root disk, but the result was the following:

==============================================
Host is virtual System Console slave
Logical volume 64, 0x3 configured as ROOT
Logical volume 64, 0x2 configured as SWAP
Logical volume 64, 0x2 configured as DUMP
Swap device table: (start & size given in 512-byte blocks)
entry 0 - major is 31, minor is 0x170003; start = 0, size = 8388608
read_ss_nvm: Cannot validate NVM - -2
Starting the STREAMS daemons-phase 1
System Console is virtual
Checking root file system.
file system is clean - log replay is not required
Root check done.
Create STCP device files
Starting the STREAMS daemons-phase 2
$Revision: vmunix: B11.23_LR FLAVOR=perf Fri Mar 19 15:24:05 PST 2004 $
Memory Information:
physical page size = 4096 bytes, logical page size = 4096 bytes
Physical: 1048576 Kbytes, lockable: 661852 Kbytes, available: 770524 Kbytes
/sbin/ioinitrc:
fsck: /dev/vg00/lvol1: possible swap device (cannot determine)
fsck SUSPENDED BY USER.
/dev/vg00/lvol1: No such device or address
Unable to mount /stand - please check entries in /etc/fstab
Skipping KRS database initialization - /stand can't be mounted

INIT: Overriding default level with level 's'
INIT: SINGLE USER MODE
INIT: Running /sbin/sh
#
==============================================

As you can see, /vg00/lvol2 and lvol3 are ok, but in the last lines of the log, HP-UX can't mount /vg00/lvol1 where /stand is. I'm stuck here!

- Is this approach/configuration possible?
- If I get this to work, will HP support this configuration (boot a vPar from a replicated disk from an nPar)?
- Do you suggest a different environment?

Thanks in advance for your help!

[melvyn burnard]

Well the first and obvious question is:
Does the disk hav eVpar software installed?
And does it have the correct Vpar database on it?

[Eduardo Chapa]

Thanks for the reply Melvyn!

Q:Does the disk have Vpar software installed?
A: Yes, in fact I was able to run the vPar monitor from it, the problem is when booting the vPar itself.

Q:And does it have the correct Vpar database on it?
A:Yes, as far as I know, is there a way to verify this? I'm sure I created only one vPar while running in vPar mode (vparcreate) and I double checked the boot path while creating it.

Yesterday I ran into a very interesting LVM command that maybe will help (correct me if I'm wrong). It's used to set up alternate links to a physical volume, but apparently it's for creating a new VG and not modifying it:

vgcreate /dev/vol_grp\
/dev/dsk/disk_name
/dev/dsk/disk_name_2

Is there a command (or editable file) to set up alternate links to an already existing physical volume?

Thanks in advance for your help!