vgscan: SIOC_INQUIRY: No such device or address

[itrc55]

Hi,

i have ia64 hp Integrity BL860c i2 server with 11.31 OS version.

please find the attached file to know what is my problem.

Thanks

[Matti_Kurkela]

So, you had three legacy disk paths in NO_HW state and removed the first of them with rmsf.

Then you ran:

# vgscan -p -v

... and got this message:


>"vgscan: SIOC_INQUIRY: No such device or address

>Verification of unique LVM disk id on each disk in the volume group
/dev/appsvg failed."


Your system has a volume group named "appsvg" and it is now missing one or more of its disks.

If this is intentional (= you are removing appsvg from the system), you should run "vgexport appsvg" to tell the LVM layer appsvg is no longer required on this system.
(The "vgremove" command would also have worked, but it requires access to the disks. "vgexport" can be run even if the disks are already gone.)

If you are only removing some disks from the appsvg volume group, you should first make sure the disk is unused (or use pvmove/lvreduce/lvremove to make it unused), then use vgreduce to remove the disk from the VG.

Let me explain this as a house-building analogy:

When you build a house, the first step is the foundation, then walls and the roof is the last. When you demolish a house, if you destroy the foundation first, the walls and roof are going to collapse and make a lot of noise. If you want to demolish a house in a controlled fashion, you'll first remove the roof, then take out the walls and then destroy the foundation as the last step.

Likewise, when configuring HP-UX disks, the physical connections are the first step. The next step is usually configuring LVM, and the last step is creating and mounting the filesystems.

When you remove disks, you should proceed in the opposite order: first unmount the filesystem(s), then reduce the disks out of the VG (or entirely remove/export the VG), and removing the devices with rmsf should be the last step.

If you miss a step in removing the disks, the system is going to present error messages: essentially it's saying "Long ago, you told me this disk/VG/filesystem should be here. Now it's not. As you haven't told me it's supposed to go away, I assume this means something is wrong."

MK

[itrc55]

Hi,

i remove the alternative path of disk on appvg volume group


this is alternative path of disk /dev/disk/disk6

/dev/dsk/c11t0d0
/dev/dsk/c7t0d0
/dev/dsk/c6t0d0
/dev/dsk/c8t0d0
/dev/dsk/c9t0d0

why this command is not working and given me this message

"vgscan: SIOC_INQUIRY: No such device or address
Verification of unique LVM disk id on each disk in the volume group
/dev/appsvg failed."

Thanks

[itrc55]

Hi,

why this command is not working and given me this message

"vgscan: SIOC_INQUIRY: No such device or address
Verification of unique LVM disk id on each disk in the volume group
/dev/appsvg failed."

Thanks

[Matti_Kurkela]

Is your purpose to destroy the entire appsvg volume group, or only remove some disks from it?

The error message is trying to say: "I'm supposed to have a volume group called appsvg, but some of its PVs are missing! The disks that are supposed to contain those PVs are gone!"

Since you've apparently disconnected the disks (as the NO_HW indication shows), this should not be a surprise to you.

If you don't need the appsvg volume group any more, run:

vgchange -a n appsvg
vgexport appsvg

This will make sure the appsvg volume group is no longer activated, and will then tell the LVM subsystem: "Forget appsvg: it is not here any more."

If you only want to remove some disks (not all of them) from the appsvg volume group, run "vgreduce -f appsvg". If the disks you removed were not in used by any logical volume, this should clear up the problem. But if those disks still contain (parts of) LVs (and the LVM does not know an alternate way to access those parts), the command will display an error message.

In short: you missed a step in your disk removal procedure. You should have first used vgexport, vgreduce or similar to tell the LVM to stop hanging onto those disk devices. The rmsf step should be done after vgexport/vgreduce.

MK