Solaris

So we finally got the system to boot again.

Long story short.... I was able to boot it with 'boot -as' after mounting the drive from the cdrom and removing the references to the metadevices in disk1/etc/vfstab. I changed those mounts back to /dev/dsk instead of /dev/md. I also had to comment out one of the set commands in disk1/etc/system.

While booted to disk1 (boot -as) I could see that all the metadevices in the metastat mirror were marked as 'require maintenance'. Anytime we would try to metadetach it would state that the devices were syncing even though they were not. A metasync command would cause an immediate kernel panic. We basically had no way to use the meta tools to rebuild the mirror. We finally got it to boot normally off disk1 (w/o boot -as) by renaming all meta config files/databases, commenting out the additional forceload md* lines in disk1/etc/system. Now when we boot and run a metastat we can see that there are no longer any metadevices configured. Finally since this is a Sun SAMFS system we needed to modify /etc/opt/SUNWsamfs/mcf to point the samfs1 device to the physical disk rather then a metadevice /dev/md/d70. Once we did that then we could finally mount the samfs device and FINALLY samfs started mounting tapes and archiving data (yah!).

So, the system is working at this point but without a mirror. Now we're going to need to recreate the metadevices from scratch (hopefully no more kernel panics when we do this).

<rant>
BTW, for anyone who has not heard Oracle has changed Sun's T&M policy. T&M customers can no longer receive incident-based support; they are requiring customers to purchase a contract. So after opening a T&M case with Sun today (with a PO) I received an email some time later saying "sorry but since your system is not under contract or warranty we are not going to provide you with T&M. We are closing your support case. Please contact us about the cost to recertify this system so that it can be placed on a contract." Nice of Oracle to leave all their Sun T&M customers in the dark. Don't get me wrong.... if it was my choice the Sun contract would have NEVER lapsed on our equipment BUT to deny T&M support??? When I call Sun I need help; how can they turn their back on their customers like that?
</rant>