volintro(8) System Manager's Manual volintro(8)
NAME
volintro, lsm, LSM - Introduction to Logical Storage Manager (LSM) terms and commands
DESCRIPTION
The following LSM commands provide a shell-level interface used by the system administrator and higher-level applications and scripts to
query and manipulate LSM objects:
volassist, vold, voldg, voldiskadm, voledit, volencap, volinfo, volinstall, voliod, vollogcnvt, volmend, volnotify, volplex, volprint, vol-
recover, volreconfig, volrootmir, volsd, volsetup, volstat, voltrace, volume, volwatch
GLOSSARY
The following list describes LSM terms: A virtual disk device that looks to applications and file systems like a regular disk partition
device. Volumes present block and raw device interfaces that are compatible in their use with disk partition devices. However, a volume is
a virtual device that can be mirrored, spanned across disk drives, moved to use different storage, and striped using administrative com-
mands. The configuration of a volume can be changed, using LSM commands, without causing disruption to applications or file systems that
are using the volume. A copy of a volume's logical data address space, also sometimes known as a mirror. A volume can have up to 32 plexes
associated with it. Each plex is, at least conceptually, a copy of the volume that is maintained consistently in the presence of volume I/O
and reconfigurations. Plexes represent the primary means of configuring storage for a volume. Plexes can have a striped, concatenated, or
RAID5 organization (layout). Disks exist as two entities. One is the physical disk on which all data is ultimately stored and which
exhibits all the behaviors of the underlying technology. The other is LSM presentation of disks which, while mapping one-to-one with the
physical disks, are just presentations of units from which allocations of storage are made. As an example, a physical disk presents the
image of a device with a definable geometry with a definable number of cylinders, heads, and so on, whereas a Logical Storage Manager disk
is simply a unit of allocation with a name and a size. A region of storage allocated on a disk for use with a volume. Subdisks are associ-
ated to volumes through plexes. One or more subdisks are laid out to form plexes based on the plex layout (striped, concatenated, or
RAID5). Subdisks are defined relative to disk media records. A reference to a physical disk, or possibly a disk partition. This record can
be thought of as a physical disk identifier for the disk or partition. Disk media records are configuration records that provide a name
(known as the disk media name or DM name) that an administrator can use to reference a particular disk, independent of its location on the
system's various disk controllers. Disk media records reference particular physical disks through a disk ID, which is a unique identifier
that is assigned to a disk when it is initialized for use with LSM.
Operations are provided to set or remove the disk ID stored in a disk media record. Such operations have the effect of removing or
replacing disks, with any associated subdisks being removed or replaced along with the disk. A configuration record that defines a
pathway to a disk. Disk access records most often name a unit number. The list of all disk access records stored in a system is
used to find all disks attached to the system. Disk access records do not identify particular physical disks.
Disk access records are identified by their disk access names (also known as DA names).
Through the use of disk IDs, LSM allows disks to be moved between controllers, or to different locations on a controller. When a
disk is moved, a different disk access record may be used when accessing the disk, although the disk media record will continue to
track the actual physical disk.
LSM builds a list of disk access records automatically, based on the list of all devices attached to the system. It is not necessary
to define disk access records explicitly. Specialty disks (such as RAM disks or floppy disks) may require that disk access records
be defined by using the voldisk define command. A group of disks that share a common configuration. A configuration consists of a
set of records describing objects (including disks, volumes, plexes, and subdisks) that are associated with one particular disk
group. Each disk group has an administrator-assigned name that can be used by the administrator to reference that disk group. Each
disk group has an internally defined unique disk group ID, which is used to differentiate two disk groups with the same administra-
tor-assigned name.
Disk groups provide a method for partitioning the configuration database, so that the database size is not too large and so that
database modifications do not affect too many drives. They also allow LSM to operate with groups of physical disk media that can be
moved between systems.
Disks and disk groups have a circular relationship: disk groups are formed from disks, and disk group configurations are stored on
disks. All disks in a disk group are stamped with a disk group ID, which is a unique identifier for naming disk groups. Some or all
disks in a disk group also store copies of the configuration database of the disk group. A disk group configuration is a small
database that contains all volume, plex, subdisk, and disk media records. These configurations are replicated onto some or all disks
in the disk group, sometimes with two copies on each disk. Because these databases are stored within disk groups, record associa-
tions cannot span disk groups. Thus, a subdisk defined on a disk in one disk group cannot be associated with a volume in another
disk group. Each system requires one special disk group, named rootdg, which is generally the default for most utilities. In addi-
tion to defining the regular disk group information, the configuration for the root disk group (rootdg) contains local information
that is specific to a disk group and that is not intended to be movable between systems. Disks used by LSM contain two special
regions: a private region and a public region. Usually, each region is formed from a complete partition of the disk; however, the
private and public regions can be allocated from the same partition.
The private region of a disk contains various on-disk structures that are used by LSM for various internal purposes. Each private
region begins with a disk header which identifies the disk and its disk group. Private regions can also contain copies of a disk
group's configuration, and copies of the disk group's kernel log. The public region of a disk is the space reserved for allocating
subdisks. Subdisks are defined with offsets that are relative to the beginning of the public region of a particular disk partition.
Only one contiguous region of disk can form the public region for a particular disk partition. A log kept in the private region on
the disk and that is written by LSM kernel. The log contains records describing the state of volumes in the disk group. This log
provides a mechanism for the kernel to persistently register state changes so that vold can be guaranteed to detect the state
changes even in the event of a system failure. A block stored in a private region of a disk and that defines several properties of
the disk. The disk header defines the size of the private region, the location and size of the public region, the unique disk ID for
the disk, the disk group ID and disk group name (if the disk is currently associated with a disk group), and the host ID for a host
that has exclusive use of the disk. A 64-byte universally unique identifier that is assigned to a physical disk when its private
region is initialized with the voldisk init operation. The disk ID is stored in the disk media record so that the physical disk can
be related to the disk media record at system startup. A 64-byte universally unique identifier that is assigned to a disk group
when the disk group is created with voldg init. This identifier is in addition to the disk group name, which is assigned by the
administrator. The disk group ID is used to check for disk groups that have the same administrator-assigned name but are actually
distinct. A name, usually assigned by the administrator, that identifies a particular host. Host IDs are used to assign ownership
to particular physical disks. When a disk is part of a disk group that is in active use by a particular host, the disk is stamped
with that host's host ID. If another system attempts to access the disk, it will detect that the disk has a non-matching host ID and
will disallow access until the first system discontinues use of the disk. To allow for system failures that do not clear the host
ID, the voldisk clearimport operation can be used to clear the host ID stored on a disk.
If a disk is a member of a disk group and has a host ID that matches a particular host, then that host will import the disk group as
part of system startup. A plex that scatters data evenly across each of its associated subdisks. A plex has a characteristic number
of stripe columns (consisting of associated subdisks) and a characteristic stripe unit size. The stripe unit size defines how data
with a particular address is allocated to one of the associated subdisks. Given a stripe unit size of 128 blocks, and two stripe
columns, the first group of 128 blocks would be allocated to the first subdisk, the second group of 128 blocks would be allocated to
the second subdisk, the third group to the first subdisk, again, and so on. A plex whose subdisks are associated at specific off-
sets within the address range of the plex, and extend into the plex address range for the length of the subdisk. This layout allows
regions of one or more disks to create a plex, rather than a single big region. The volboot file is a special file (usually stored
in /etc/vol/volboot) that is used to bootstrap the root disk group and to define a system's host ID. In addition to a host ID, the
volboot file contains a list of disk access records. On system startup, this list of disks is scanned, in addition to the automati-
cally generated list, to find a disk that is a member of the rootdg disk group and that is stamped with this system's host ID. The
volboot file allows the configuration to be located on disks not detected by system initialization. When such a disk is found, its
configuration is read and is used to get a more complete list of disk access records that are used as a second-stage bootstrap of
the root disk group, and to locate all other disk groups. If the plexes of a volume contain different data, then the plexes are
said to be inconsistent. This is only a problem if LSM is unaware of the inconsistencies, as the volume can return differing results
for consecutive reads. Plex inconsistency is a serious compromise of data integrity. This inconsistency can be caused by write oper-
ations that start around the time of a system failure, if parts of the write complete on one plex but not the other. Plexes can also
be inconsistent after creation of a mirrored volume, if the plexes are not first synchronized to contain the same data. An important
part of Logical Storage Manager operation is ensuring that consistent data is returned to any application that reads a volume. This
may require that plex consistency of a volume be ``recovered'' by copying data between plexes so that they have the same contents.
Alternatively, the volume can be put into a state such that reads from one plex are automatically written back to the other plexes,
thus making the data consistent for that volume offset.
CONVENTIONS
A number of conventions are available for LSM commands to provide a finer degree of administration. The following is a list of such conven-
tions:
Command Syntax
Most LSM commands provide more than one operation, with operations grouped into command primarily by object type. Commands that provide
multiple operations are typically invoked with the following form: command [options] [keyword] [operands]
Here, command is the name of the command and keyword is a name that identifies the specific operation to perform. Any options that are
introduced in the standard -letter form precede the operation keyword.
To aid in normal use, all of the commands provide an extended usage message that lists all the options and operation keywords its supports.
For commands that are keyword-based, the extended usage message can be displayed by using a keyword of help. Some commands that use oper-
ands for purposes other than operation selection, the extended usage message can be displayed by using the -H option. The extended usage
messages are intended to serve as reminders, and not as replacements for user documentation.
Standard Length Numbers
Many basic properties of objects that are managed by LSM require specification of lengths, either as a pure object length or as an offset
relative to some other object. LSM supports volume lengths up to 2,147,483,647 disk sectors (one terabyte on most systems). Typing such
large numbers, or even much smaller numbers, can be annoying. LSM provides a uniform syntax for representing such numbers, which uses suf-
fixes to provide convenient multipliers. Numbers can be specified in decimal, octal, or hexadecimal. Also, numbers can be specified as a
sum of several numbers, as a convenience to avoid using a calculator.
A hexadecimal (base 16) number is introduced using a prefix of 0x. For example, 0xfff is the same as decimal 4095. An octal (base 8) number
is introduced using a prefix of 0. For example, 0177777 is the same as decimal 65535.
A number can be followed by a suffix character to indicate a multiplier for the number. A length number with no suffix character represents
a count of standard disk sectors. The length of a standard disk sector can vary between systems; it is commonly 512 bytes. On systems where
disks can have different sector sizes, one of the sectors sizes will be chosen as the ``standard'' size. Supported suffix characters are:
Multiply the length by 512 bytes (blocks) Multiply the length by the standard sectors size (default) Multiply the length by 1024 bytes
(Kilobytes) Multiply the length by 1,048,576 (1024K) bytes (Megabytes) Multiply the length by 1,073,741,824 (1024M) bytes (Gigabytes) Mul-
tiply the length by 1,099,511,627,776 (1024G) bytes (Terabytes)
Numbers are represented internally as an integer number of sectors. As a result, if the standard disk sectors size is larger than 512
bytes, numbers can be specified that will need to be rounded to a sector. Rounding is always done to the next lowest, not the nearest, mul-
tiple of the sector size.
Since the letter b is a valid hexadecimal character, there is a special case for the b suffix where a single blank character can separate a
number from the b suffix character. Use of a blank within a number, when invoking commands from the shell, usually requires quoting the
number. For example:
/sbin/volassist make vol01 "0x1000 b"
Numbers can be added or subtracted by separating two or more numbers by a plus or minus sign, respectively. A plus sign is optional. As an
example, the largest allowed number that can be represented on a system with a 512 byte sector size can be entered as:
1023g+1023m+1023k+1
The number 2g-1 can be used to represent the largest volume size that can be used with most file systems.
In output, LSM reports length numbers as a simple count of sectors, with no suffix character.
Case is not important in length specification. Hexadecimal numbers and suffix characters can be specified using any reasonable combination
of uppercase and lowercase letters.
Disk group selection
Most commands operate upon only one disk group per invocation. Each disk group has a separate configuration from every other disk group and
it is possible for two disk groups to contain two objects that have the same name. This can happen, in particular, if a disk group is moved
from one system to another. However, most utilities make no attempt to ensure that names between disk groups are unique, so name collisions
can occur anyway.
System administrators who endeavor to avoid name collisions should be able to use most of the utilities without having to specify disk
groups except when creating objects. Administrators cannot use single-command invocations that reference objects in more than one disk
group, but disk groups will be selected automatically, based on objects specified in the command.
The standard rules that most commands use for selecting the disk group for a command are as follows: Given a particular set of object names
specified on the command, look for the disk group of each object. If all objects are in the same disk group, use that disk group. If any
named object is not unique between all disk groups, and if one of those object names is not in the rootdg disk group, then fail. To force
use of a particular disk group, use -g diskgroup to indicate the group. Non-unique names do not cause errors when a disk group is specified
explicitly. The diskgroup specification is either a disk group ID or a disk group name. A special case is provided for the rootdg disk
group. Any set of objects in the rootdg disk group can be specified without specifying -g rootdg, even if the given object name is used in
another disk group.
If a set of object names is given on the command line, and if some are unique but some are not unique, then the command will still fail
according to the rules listed above.
RECORD TYPES
Disk group configurations contain six types of records: volume records, plex records, subdisk records, disk media records, disk group
records, and disk access records. Each of these record types are described in the sections that follow. Disk access records are specific to
the root disk group and are stored in configurations only because there is no other convenient place to store them; otherwise, they are
logically separate from all disk groups. Since they are specific and meaningful to the local system only, the logical place for their stor-
age is the rootdg since that is the only disk group guaranteed to exist on the system.
Disk Group Records
Disk group records define several different types of names for a disk group. The different types of names are: The name of the disk group,
as defined on disk. This name is stored in the disk group configuration, and is also stored in the disk headers of all disks in the disk
group. The standard name that the system uses when referencing the disk group. References to the disk group name usually mean the alias
name. Volume directories are structured into subdirectories based on the disk group alias name. Typically, the disk group's alias name and
real name are identical. A local alias can be useful for gaining access to a disk group with a name that conflicts with other disk groups
in the system, or that conflicts with records in the rootdg disk group. A 64-byte identifier that represents the unique ID of the disk
group. All disk groups on all systems should have a different disk group ID, even if they have the same real name. This identifier is
stored in the disk headers of all disks in the disk group. It is used to ensure that LSM does not confuse two disk groups which were cre-
ated with the same name.
Volume Records
Volume records define the characteristics of particular volume devices. The name of a volume record defines the node name used for files
in the /dev/vol and /dev/rvol directories. The block device for a particular volume (which can be used as an argument to the mount command
(see mount(1)) has the path:
/dev/vol/groupname/volume
where groupname is the name assigned by the administrator to the disk group containing the volume. The raw device for a volume, typically
used for application I/O and for issuing I/O control operations (see ioctl(2)), has the path:
/dev/rvol/groupname/volume
For convenience, volumes assigned to the root disk group are accessible under the rootdg subdirectories of /dev/vol and /dev/rvol, but are
also under /dev/vol/volume and /dev/rvol/volume.
Reads to a volume device are directed to one of the read-write or read-only plexes associated with the volume. Writes to the volume are
directed to all of the enabled read-write and write-only plexes associated with the volume.
During a write operation, two plexes of a volume may become out of sync with each other, due to the fact that writes directed to two disks
can complete at different times. This is not normally a problem. However, if the system were to crash or lose power during a write opera-
tion, the two plexes could have different contents.
Most applications and file systems are not written with the presumption that two separate reads of a device can return different contents
without an intervening write operation. Since plexes with different contents could cause such a situation where two read operations of a
block return different contents, LSM expends considerable effort to ensure that this is avoided.
Volumes have the following fundamental attributes: Each volume has a usage type, which defines a particular class of rules for operating on
the volume, typically based on the expected content of the volume. Several utilities can apply extensions or limitations that apply to vol-
umes with a particular usage type. Several usage types are included with the base release of LSM: fsgen, for use with volumes that contain
file systems; gen, for use with volumes that are used as swap devices or for other applications that do not use file systems; and special
root and swap usage types which are specifically for use with the root file system volume and the primary swap device. Each volume has a
length, which defines the limiting offset of read and write operations. The length is assigned by the administrator, and may or may not
match the lengths of the associated plexes. Each volume is either enabled, disabled, or detached. When enabled, normal read and write
operations are allowed on the volume, and any file system residing on the volume can be mounted, or used in the usual way. When disabled,
no access to the volume or any of its associated plexes is allowed. When detached, some ioctls can be used by commands to operate on the
volume. Usage types maintain a private state field related to the volume that relate to operations that have been performed on the volume,
or to failure conditions that have been encountered. This state field contains a string of up to 14 characters. Each volume has between
zero and 32 associated plexes. A configurable policy for switching between plexes for volume reads. When a volume has more than one
enabled associated plex, LSM can distribute reads between the plexes to distribute the I/O load and thus increase total possible bandwidth
of reads through the volume.
The read policy can be set by the administrator. Possible policies are: For every other read operation, switches to a different plex
from the previous read operation. Given three plexes, this will switch between each of the three plexes, in order. Specifies a par-
ticular named plex that is used to satisfy read requests. In the event that a read request cannot be satisfied by the preferred
plex, this policy changes to round-robin. Adjusts to use an appropriate read policy based on the set of plexes associated with the
volume. If exactly one enabled read-write striped plex is associated with the volume, then that plex is chosen automatically as the
preferred plex; otherwise, the round-robin policy is used. If a volume has one striped plex and one non-striped plex, preferring the
striped plex often yields better throughput. This read policy is the default policy. A string that is organized as a set of usage-
type options to apply when starting (enabling) a volume. See volume(8) for details. A policy to use for logging changes to the vol-
ume, which can be assigned by the administrator. Policies that can be specified are: Do not perform any special actions when writing
to the volume. Just write the requested data to all read-write or write-only plexes. A volume is divided into regions. A bitmap
where each bit corresponds to a region is maintained. When a write to a particular region occurs, the respective bit is set to on.
When the system is restarted after a crash, this region bitmap is used to limit the amount of data copying that is required to
recover plex consistency for the volume. The region changes are logged to special log subdisks associated with one or more of the
plexes associated with the volume. Use of DRL can greatly speed recovery of a volume, but it may degrade performance of the volume
under normal operation. A mode that applies to the volume, which is managed by utilities as part of plex consistency recovery.
When this mode is enabled, each read operation will recover plex consistency for the region covered by the read. Plex consistency is
recovered by reading data from blocks of one plex and writing that data to all other writable plexes. This ensures that a future
read operation covering the same range of blocks will read the same data. A mode that applies to the volume, which can be enabled
or disabled by the administrator using voledit. If this mode is enabled, then a read failure for a plex will cause data to be read
from an alternate plex and then written back to the plex that got the read failure. This will usually fix the error. Only if the
writeback fails will the plex be detached for having an unrecoverable I/O failure. A mode that applies to the volume, which can be
enabled or disabled by the administrator using voledit. This mode takes affect only if dirty region logging is in effect. When the
operating system hands off a write request to the volume driver, the operating system may continue to change the memory that is
being written to disk. LSM cannot detect that the memory is changing, so it can inadvertently leave plexes with inconsistent con-
tents. This is not normally a problem, because the operating system ensures that any such modified memory is rewritten to the volume
before the volume is closed (such as by a clean system shutdown). However, if the system crashes, plexes may be inconsistent. Since
the dirty region logging feature prevents recovery of the entire volume, it may not ensure that plexes are entirely consistent.
Turning on the writecopy mode (which is normally set by default) often causes LSM to copy the data for a write request to a new sec-
tion of memory before writing it to disk. Because the write is done from the copied memory, it cannot change and so the data written
to each plex is guaranteed to be the same if the write completes. There are several modes that can be set on the volume, by utili-
ties according to the usage type of the volume. These modes affect operation of a volume in the presence of I/O failures. Currently
only one of these policies, called GEN_DET_SPARSE is ever used. This policy tracks complete and incomplete plexes in a volume (an
incomplete plex does not have a backing subdisk for all blocks in the volume). If an unrecoverable error occurs on an incomplete
plex, the plex is detached (disabled from receiving regular volume I/O requests). If an unrecoverable error occurs on a complete
plex, the plex is detached unless it is the last complete plex. If the plex is the last complete read-write plex, any incomplete
plexes that overlap with the error will be detached but the plex with the error will remain attached.
This default policy is chosen to ensure that an I/O that fails on one plex will not, in the future, be directed to that plex again
unless that plex is the last complete plex remaining attached to the volume. In that case, the policy ensures that the volume will
return the error consistently, even in the presence of incomplete plexes. An administrator-assigned string of up to 40 characters
that can be set and changed using the voledit command. LSM does not interpret the comment field. The comment cannot contain newline
characters. The user, group, and file permission modes used for the volume device nodes. The user and group are normally root and
system. The mode usually allows read and write permission to the owner, and no access by other users.
Plex Records
Plex records define the characteristics of a particular plex of a volume. A plex can be in either an associated state or a dissociated
state. In the dissociated state, the plex is not a part of a volume. A dissociated plex cannot be accessed in any way. An associated plex
can be accessed through the volume.
Plexes have the following fundamental attributes: Each plex is either enabled, disabled, or detached. When enabled, normal read and write
operations from the volume can be directed to the plex. When disabled, no I/O operations will be applied to the plex. When detached, normal
volume I/O will not be directed to the plex.
I/O failures encountered during normal volume I/O may move the enabled state for a plex directly from enabled to detached. See the
description of volume exception policies (earlier in this manual page) for more information. Each plex is in read-write, read-only,
or write-only mode. This mode affects read and write operations directed to the volume, if the plex is enabled. For read-write and
read-only modes, volume read operations can be directed to the plex. For read-write and write-only modes, volume write operations
are directed to the plex.
Plexes are normally in read-write mode. Write-only mode is used to recover a plex that failed, and whose contents have thus become
out-of-date with respect to the volume. It is also used when attaching a new plex to a volume. In read-write mode, writes to the
volume will update the plex, causing written regions to be up-to-date. Typically, a set of special copy operations will be used to
update the remainder of the plex. The organization of associated subdisks with respect to the plex address space. The layout is
striped, concatenated, or RAID5. Each plex has zero or more associated subdisks. Subdisks are associated at offsets relative to the
beginning of the plex address space. Subdisks for concatenated plexes may not cover the entire length of the plex, in which case
they leave holes in the plex. A plex that is not as long as the volume to which it is associated is considered to have a hole
extending from the end of the plex to the end of the volume. A plex with a hole is considered incomplete, and is sometimes called
sparse. Each plex can have at most one associated log subdisk. A log subdisk is used with the DRL feature to improve the time
required to recover consistency of a volume after a system failure. If a plex is identified as a log subdisk, that plex is a log
plex. The length of a plex is the offset of the last subdisk in the plex plus the length of that subdisk. In other words, the
length of the plex is defined by the last block in the plex address space that is backed by a subdisk. This value may or may not
relate to the length of the volume, depending on whether the plex is completely contiguously allocated. The offset of the first
block in the plex address space that is not backed by a subdisk. If the plex has no holes, the contiguous length matches the plex
length. If the contiguous length is equal to or greater than the length of the associated volume, the plex is considered complete,
otherwise it is sparse. Volume usage types maintain a private state field related to the the operations that have been performed on
the plex, or to failure conditions that have been encountered. This state field contains a string of up to 14 characters. Various
condition flags are defined for the plex that define state which is recognized automatically, rather than managed by the volume
usage type. Defined flags are: No physical disk could be found corresponding to the disk ID in the disk media record for one of the
subdisks associated with the plex. The plex cannot be used until the condition is fixed or the affected subdisk is dissociated. One
of the disk media records was put into the removed state through explicit administrative action. The plex cannot be used until the
disk is replaced or the affected subdisk is dissociated. A disk for one of the disk media records was replaced or was reattached
too late to prevent the plex from becoming out-of-date with respect to the volume. The plex requires complete recovery from another
plex in the volume to synchronize the plex with the correct contents of the volume. The plex was detached as a result of an I/O
failure detected during normal volume I/O. The plex is out-of-date with respect to the volume, and in need of complete recovery.
However, this condition also indicates a likelihood that one of the disks in the system should be replaced. A plex is considered to
have ``volatile'' contents if the disk for any of the plex's subdisks is considered to be volatile. The contents of a volatile disk
are not presumed to survive a system reboot. The contents of a volatile plex are always considered out-of-date after a recovery and
in need of complete recovery from another plex. An administrator-assigned string of up to 40 characters that can be set and changed
using the voledit command. LSM does not interpret the comment field. The comment cannot contain newline characters.
Subdisk Records
Subdisk records define a region of disk, allocated from a disk's public region. Subdisks have very little state associated with them, other
than the configuration state that defines which region of disk the subdisk occupies. Subdisks cannot overlap each other, either in their
associations with plexes, or in their arrangement on disk public regions.
Subdisks have the following fundamental attributes: The name of the disk media record that the subdisk is defined on. The offset, from the
beginning of the disk's public region, to the start of the subdisk. For associated subdisks, this is the offset (from the beginning of the
plex) of the subdisk association. For subdisks associated with striped plexes, the plex offset defines relative ordering of subdisks in the
plex, rather than actual offsets within the plex address space. The length of the subdisk. An administrator-assigned string of up to 40
characters that can be set and changed using the voledit command. LSM does not interpret the comment field. The comment cannot contain new-
line characters.
Disk Media Records
Disk media records define a specific disk within a disk group. The name of a disk media record (the disk media name) is assigned when a
disk is first added to a disk group (using the voldg adddisk operation). Disk media records can be assigned to specific physical disks by
associating the disk media record with the current disk access record for the physical disk.
Disk media records have the following fundamental attributes: A 64-byte unique identifier representing the physical disk to which the media
record is associated. This can be cleared to indicate that the disk is considered in the removed state. A removed disk has no current asso-
ciation with any physical disk. The disk access name that is currently used to access the physical disk referenced by the disk ID. If the
disk ID is defined, but no physical disk with that ID could be found, the disk access name will be clear. A disk where the physical disk
could not be found is considered to be in the NODAREC, or inaccessible, state. A disk can become inaccessible either because the indicated
disk is not currently attached to the system, or because I/O failures on the physical disk prevented LSM from identifying or using the
physical disk.
A disk media record that has an active association with a physical disk (both the disk ID and the disk access name attributes are defined),
inherits several properties from the underlying physical disk. These attributes are taken from the disk header, which is stored in the pri-
vate region of the the disk. These inherited attributes are: The length of the region of the physical disk that is available for subdisk
allocations. The length of the region of the physical disk that is reserved for storing private Logical Storage Manager information. The
fundamental I/O size for the disk, in bytes, also known as the sector size. All I/Os destined for this disk must be multiples of this size.
Currently, LSM requires that all disks have the same sector size. On Tru64 UNIX systems the sector size is 512 bytes.
Disk Access Records
Disk access records define an address, or access path, that can be used to access a disk. The list of all disk access records defines the
list of all disk addresses that LSM can use to locate physical disks. Disk access records do not define specific physical disks, since
physical disks can be moved on a system. When a physical disk is moved, a different disk access record may be necessary to locate it.
Disk access records are stored in the rootdg disk group configuration. Unlike all other record types, the names of disk access records can
conflict with the names of other records. For example, a specialty disk (such as a RAM disk) can use the same name for both the disk access
record and the disk media record that points to it. It is typically advisable to use different names for the access and media records, to
avoid additional confusion if disks are moved.
Disk access records can be defined explicitly. Some (sometimes all) disk access records may be configured automatically by LSM, based on
available information in the operating system. Such automatically-configured disks are not stored persistently in the on-disk root disk
group configuration, but are instead regenerated every time LSM starts up.
Disk access records have the following fundamental attributes: The name of the disk access record is typically a disk address of some kind.
Disk names are usually of the form dsknp, where dsk is the device mnenomic for disk devices, n is the sequence number of the disk, and p is
the partition identifier (in the range a to h). Each disk access record has a type, which identifies certain key characteristics of LSM's
interaction with the disk. Currently available types are: sliced, simple, and nopriv. See voldisk(8) for more information on disk types.
Typically, most or all of the disks will be of type sliced. It may be desirable to create specialty disks (such as RAM disks) with type
nopriv.
If the physical disk represented by the disk access record is currently associated with a disk media record, then the following fields are
defined: The name of the disk group containing the disk media record. The name of the disk media record that points to the physical disk.
Additional attributes can be added, arbitrarily, by disk types. See voldisk(8) for a list of additional attributes defined by the standard
disk types.
VOLUME USAGE TYPES
The usage type of a volume represents a class of rules for operating on a volume. Each usage type is defined by a set of executables under
the directory /sbin/lsm.d/usage_type, where usage_type is the name given to the usage type. The required executables are: volinfo, volmake,
volmend, volplex, volsd, and volume. These executables are invoked by LSM administrative utilities with the same names. The executables
under /sbin/lsm.d/usage_type should not, normally, be executed directly.
Five usage types are provided with LSM: gen, fsgen, root, swap, and raid5. It is likely that new usage types will be added in future
releases. It is also possible for third-party products to install additional usage types.
The usage types currently provided with LSM store state information in the volume and plex usage-type state fields. The state fields
defined for volumes are: The volume is not yet initialized. This is the initial state for volumes created by volmake. The volume has been
stopped and the contents for all plexes are consistent. The volume has been started and is running normally, or was running normally when
the system was stopped. If the system crashes in this state, then the volume may require plex consistency recovery. The volume requires
recovery. This is typically set after a system failure to indicate that the plexes in the volume may be inconsistent, so that they require
recovery (see the resync operation in volume(8)). Plex consistency recovery is currently being done on the volume. volume resync sets
this state when it starts to recovery plex consistency on a volume that was in the NEEDSYNC state.
The state fields defined for plexes are: The plex is not yet initialized. This state is set when the volume state is also EMPTY. The plex
was running normally when the volume was stopped. The plex will be enabled without requiring recovery when the volume is started. The plex
is running normally on a started volume. The plex condition flags (NODAREC, REMOVED, RECOVER, and IOFAIL) may apply if the system is
rebooted and the volume restarted. The plex was detached, either by volplex det or by an I/O failure. volume start will change the state
for a plex to STALE if any of the plex condition flags are set. STALE plexes will be reattached automatically, when starting a volume, by
calling volplex att. The plex was disabled by the volmend off operation. See volmend(8) for more information. This is a snapshot plex
that is being attached by the volassist snapstart operation. When the attach is complete, the state for the plex will be changed to SNAP-
DONE. If the system fails before the attach completes, the plex and all of its subdisks will be removed. This is a snapshot plex created
by volassist snapstart that is fully attached. A plex in this state can be turned into a snapshot volume with volassist snapshot. See
volassist(8) for more information. If the system fails before the attach completes, the plex and all of its subdisks will be removed. This
is a snapshot plex being attached by the volplex snapstart operation. When the attach is complete, the state for the plex will be changed
to SNAPDIS. If the system fails before the attach completes, the plex will be dissociated from the volume. This is a snapshot plex created
by volplex snapstart that is fully attached. A plex in this state can be turned into a snapshot volume with volplex snapshot. See vol-
plex(8) for more information. If the system fails before the attach completes, the plex will be dissociated from the volume. This is a
plex that is being associated and attached to a volume with volplex att. If the system fails before the attach completes the plex will be
dissociated from the volume. This is a plex that is being associated and attached to a volume with volplex att. If the system fails
before the attach completes the plex will be dissociated from the volume and removed. Any subdisks in the plex will be kept. This is a
plex that is being associated and attached to a volume with volplex att. If the system fails before the attach completes, the plex and its
subdisks will be dissociated from the volume and removed.
EXIT CODES
The majority of LSM utilities use a common set of exit codes, which can be used by shell scripts or other types of programs to react to
specific problems detected by the utilities. For C programmers, these exit status codes are defined in the include file volclient.h. The
number and macro name for each distinct exit code is described below. Shell script writers must directly compare against the numbers speci-
fied. The command is not reporting any error through the exit code. Some command line arguments to the command were invalid. A syntax
error occurred in a command or description, or a specified record name is too long or contains invalid characters. This code is returned
only by utilities that implement a command or description language. This code may also be returned for errors in search patterns. The vol-
ume daemon does not appear to be running. An unexpected error was encountered while communicating with the volume daemon. An unexpected
error was returned by a system call or by the C library. This can also indicate that the command ran out of memory. The status for a com-
mit was lost because the volume daemon was killed and restarted during the commit of a transaction, but after restart the volume daemon did
not know whether the commit succeeded or failed. VEX_UTILERR: The command encountered an error that it should not have encountered. This
generally implies a condition that the command should have tested for but did not, or a condition that results from the volume daemon
returning a value that did not make sense.
VEX_UNKNOWN: An unknown or internal error was encountered. This code may be used, for example, when the volume daemon returns an
unrecognized error number. The time required to complete a transaction exceeded 60 seconds, causing the transaction locks to be
lost. As most utilities will reattempt the transaction at least once if a timeout occurs, this usually implies that a transaction
timed out two or more times. No disk group could be identified for an operation. This results either from naming a disk group that
does not exist, or from supplying names on a command line that are in different disk groups or in multiple disk groups. A change
made to the database by another process caused the command to stop. This code is also returned by a usage-type-dependent command if
it is given a record that is associated with a different usage type. If this situation occurs when the usage-type-dependent command
is called from a switchout command, then the database was changed after the switchout command determined the proper usage type to
invoke. A requested subdisk, plex, or volume record was not found in the configuration database. This may also mean that a record
was an inappropriate type. A name used to create a new configuration record matches the name of an existing record. A subdisk,
plex, or volume is locked against concurrent access. This code is used for inter-transaction locks associated with usage type utili-
ties. The code is also used for the dissociated plex or subdisk lock convention, which writes a non-blank string to the tutil[0]
field in a plex or subdisk structure to indicate that the record is being used. No usage type could be determined for a command
that requires a usage type. An unknown or invalid usage type was specified. A plex or subdisk is associated, but the operation
requires a dissociated record. A plex or subdisk is dissociated, but the operation requires an associated record. This code can
also be used to indicate that a subdisk or plex is not associated with a specific plex or volume. A plex or subdisk was not disso-
ciated because it was the last record associated with a volume or plex. Association of a plex or subdisk would surpass the maximum
number that can be associated to a volume or plex. A specified operation is invalid within the parameters specified. An I/O error
was encountered that caused the command to abort an operation. A volume involved in an operation did not have any associated
plexes, although at least one was required. A plex involved in an operation did not have any associated subdisks, although at least
one was required. A volume could not be started by the volume start operation, because the configuration of the volume and its
plexes prevented the operation. A specified volume was already started. A specified volume was not started. For example, this code
is returned by the volume stop operation if the operation is given a volume that is not started. A volume or plex involved in an
operation is in the detached state, thus preventing a successful operation. A volume or plex involved in an operation is in the
disabled state, thus preventing a successful operation. A volume or plex involved in an operation is in the enabled state, thus
preventing a successful operation. An unrecognized error was encountered. This code is currently unused. An operation failed
because a volume device was open or mounted, or because a subdisk was associated with an open or mounted volume or plex.
Exit codes greater than 32 are reserved for use by usage types. Codes greater than 64 can be reserved for use by specific utilities.
SEE ALSO
volassist(8), vold(8), voldg(8), voldiskadm(8), voledit(8), volencap(8), volinfo(8), volinstall(8), voliod(8), vollogcnvt(8), volmend(8),
volnotify(8), volplex(8), volprint(8), volrecover(8), volreconfig(8), volrootmir(8), volsd(8), volsetup(8), volstat(8), voltrace(8), vol-
ume(8), volwatch(8),
volintro(8)