Here is a little background. We have a V240 server that has two disks mirrored (out of 4 disks) and one of the disk complained when booting up. The system complained with /etc/inittab file is truncated or corrupted, cannot create /ar/adm/utmpx failed write of utmpx entry.

Someone tried to fix this problem by removing the mirrored root disk and tried booting up the system. I believe with mirrored disks you cannot do that and must break the mirror to remove. Or at least boot up to the other mirrored root disk before breaking the mirror.

The system boots up in the ok prompt with the original mirrored disk and I cannot get it to boot to the other mirrored disk. I have ran the devalias and used this path to create nvalias altboot path and rebooting the box. But I still come up with the ok prompt.

am trying to boot to the other mirrored disk but have failed to get to that point. Whoever build thi box provided me with a Gold Disk and this is what was used in place of the root disk but I do not think the mirror was broken up before using this Gold Disk...thus think we may have a stale system.

Any ideas on how to boot up in the other mirrored disk?

Thanks!

Recable?

There are procedures online: Recovering From Boot Problems - Solaris Volume Manager Administration Guide

Maybe boot block is not installed on the second drive?
If it is not installed then boot from cdrom into single user mode and install boot block.

ok boot cdrom -s
# /usr/sbin/installboot /usr/platform/
`uname -i`/lib/fs/ufs/bootblk /dev/rdsk/cxtxdxsx

Thanks for the help! I have thought about the boot block maybe not being installed on the second drive. I thought with mirroring the boot block would be on the second drive because after all the root drive has the boot block installed so this would be replicated over to the second mirrored disk. I did not want to make it worse by running the installboot command. Also with the error messages showing /etc/inittab truncated or corrupted...this does not sound like a boot block issue?

The last file executed before the system boots up is /etc/inittab so does that mean the boot block was successfully executed if I coem to the ok prompt?

I am stil not able to figure out why we are getting this error on the /etc/inittab execution. If you have any ideas please throw them out!

I am trying to locate a Solaris 8 boot cdrom and try to boot in single user mode and copy over the default /etc/inittab file and see if this helps.

I'm no genius but..... Your machine would come to the ok> prompt with no disks in it.... OBP sits beneath the OS and is totally independant of it so the bootblk isn't a factor in getting to the ok> .... :0/

What are you using to mirror the disks SDS/SVM or VxVM?

By rights there should be no need to break the mirrors neatly.... The whole point of mirroring them is to protect against a catestrophic failure in a disk.... Which you would have created by pulling one of them.... I'd have thought both should be bootable, you need to be absolutely sure the boot paths for rootdisk & rootmirror are correct, it's easy to miss a slice or somesuch....

Martin