What Guides Disk Controller Numbering cNtxdy ?

[Alzhy]

What guides controller numbering in HPUX? And how do I reconfigure it so it always starts at zero ? Does it matter at all to have evrything start at zero?

I am posing this question as a Solaris to HPUX transitioning admin - thanks a lot to this forum it's been "painless" so far.

Reason I ask is on a fully loaded rp8400 that I've carved up into 4 vPars - I noticed that if I do a fresh install on each vPar, my controllers start at c0. However, if I do an install using "Golden Image -- Archives?" or the "dd" approach, some of my vPars start at some odd controller numbers...

I can understand why is this so but is there a way in HPUX to sort of re-arrange this so my first SCSI controller starts at c0?

Thanks!

[Patrick Wallek]

When you do a fresh install, your controllers will start at c0 because there are no c?t?d? device files present yet. So it starts at the lowest number which is c0. If you install from a golden image, then your c? will start at whatever lowest number is available since you probably already have some c?t?d? devices in /dev/dsk and /dev/rdsk. I don't know this for sure, but it makes sense to me.

Once the OS is installed, I wouldn't want to try to rearrange it all. If you did that you could have problems with your VG set up. You could vgexport, rearrange everything, and vgimport, but I personally don't think it's worth it.

[A. Clay Stephenson]

The controller "instance" number is derived from the order in which the devices are "discovered" and that depends upon the hardware address of the various controllers. Moreover, if you add controllers to an existing machine the old numbers will remain but if you now load a fresh OS then its almost ceratin to change. The assignment of these instance numbers doesn't really matter but you can use ioscan with -M, -H, and -I options to force assignment.

[Alzhy]

Thanks to you both... specially to A. Clay. I understand it really does not matter but I am just curious and some sites do want some "nice" controller numbering...

So I reckon of I do force a renumbering, this will break LVM right? For which I will redo my system VG (if using LVM)? I am certain on my VxVM diskgroups I will not have a problem as well as my VxVM rooted vPars.

I will try this and let you know!

[Sundar_7 · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Sure there is a way. But then too much of a hassle. You need to reassign the instance numbers for the controllers using ioinit. It is long since I have tried this. So on a nutshell I can tell U how it goes, rest on ur luck :-)

1) Look at the man page of ioinit and create an input file with the format mentioned.

h/wpath class_name instance#

user ioscan, extact the fields and print them to a file.

2) make_tape_recovery of ur system
3) make a copy of /stand/ioconfig and /etc/ioconfig.
4) remove /etc/ioconfig and reboot
5) now the system should halt in ioinitrc promot
6) use ioinit with the file created as arguement
7) and insf -e to recreate device files
8) reboot in maintenance mode
9) export vg00 and import with the new device files.
10) lvlnboot -R
11) done

Thanks,

Sundar

[Paulo A G Fessel]

I don't know if it's too late, but take a look in these two documents:

http://www.emulex.com/ts/docfc/hpux/41108/ioscan.htm

http://www.emulex.com/ts/docfc/hpux/41108/device_num.htm

Basically, they are "everything you wanted to know about ioscan and device numbering in HP-UX but was afraid to ask". ;-)

Have fun,

Paulo Fessel