What is disk labeled 'DUMP' in sam?

[Randy Hagedorn]

Hi,

In the sam area "Disks and File Systems" it lists all the disks that are attached to our system. I want to extend vg00 and there is a disk that says 'dump' with no volume group assigned to it.

Disk Devices 0 of 10 selected
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hardware Number Volume Total
Path of Paths Use Group Mbytes Description
/---------------------------------------------------------------------------\
| 0/0/1/0.0.0 1 CDFS -- 509 HP DVD-ROM 304 ^
| 0/0/2/0.6.0 1 Dump -- 17522 SEAGATE ST318436LCV
| 0/0/2/1.6.0 1 LVM vg00 17522 SEAGATE ST318436LCV
| 0/5/0/0.11.0 1 LVM vg04 70007 SEAGATE ST173404LC
| 0/5/0/0.12.0 1 LVM vg02 70007 SEAGATE ST173404LC
| 0/5/0/0.14.0 1 LVM vg02 70007 SEAGATE ST173404LC
| 0/5/0/0.8.0 1 LVM vg03 35003 SEAGATE ST336704LC
| 1/12/0/0.12.0 1 LVM vg02 70007 SEAGATE ST173404LC
| 1/12/0/0.14.0 1 LVM vg02 70007 SEAGATE ST173404LC
| 1/12/0/0.8.0 1 LVM vg03 35003 SEAGATE ST336704LC v

What is this disk used for and can I use it or a portion of it to extend our vg00?

Thanks,
Randy

[Patrick Wallek]

That is probably your DUMP device. Check the output of 'lvlnboot -v' and check the "dump: " line.

If you see that device name, then that is indeed your DUMP device. The DUMP device is used to write the contents of RAM to when a machine crashes or TOC's. This is the information that is used the create the crash dump files that are generally stored in /var/adm/crash.

I would not recommend using this device to extend VG00.

[Q4you]

It seems that someone may have over-allocated dump space. Keep the dump atleast as much as your memory size.

You can recovery "dump" by following ->

lvrmboot -d

recreate a new dump lv of smaller size

lvlnboot -d

lvlnboot -R

check with lvlnboot -v vg00. From my memory but please read the man pages of the above commands.