Solaris

Short instruction to replace a failed bootable disk in a LVM mirror

0.
Indication of a failed disk.
metastat
(Some mirrors are not okay.)

Avoid a system reboot until all mirrors are okay!

1.
Physically identify the failed disk.
Tip: if the disk has a LED, make some activity with
find / -xdev
The working disk has a flickering LED.

2.
Physically replace the failed disk.
Wait a minute, the system might auto-detect it.
Then run
format
If the disk is not shown, run devfsadm, re-run format

3.
Assuming the failed disk is c1t1d0 and shows up as disk 1 in
format
Transfer the disk layout with format, disk -> 0 (the working disk),
partition, print
Note the layout.
Then quit, disk -> 1 (the new disk), partition, select -> original[0]
Check with print that it is identical, then label -> yes.

4.
See failed meta-DBs
metadb

For each failed metadb
do
(example with failed c1t1d0):
delete and recreate

metadb -d c1t1d0s7
metadb -c 2 -a c1t1d0s7

5.
See failed sub-devices
metastat

For each failed mirror
do
(example with d60 and failed c1t1d0):

metareplace -e d60 c1t1d0s6
metastat d60
(Resync is in progress...)
Wait until resync is ready.

Solaris Volume Management (LVM), the earlier name was DiskSuite (SDS).
Basically it is an inflexible implementation, but works okay with UFS (which is also inflexible).
The Solaris roadmap sees ZFS replacing UFS. ZFS is flexible, faster than UFS, and has integrated volume management.

Short instruction to get a mirror on two bootable disks.

1.
Install the OS on one disk, 2nd identical disk is unused.

Ensure there is no cold mirror in the crontab.
crontab -l | grep mirror
Ensure there is no swap on the 2nd disk.
swap -l
grep '^/dev.*swap' /etc/vfstab

2.
Meta-DBs hold all configuration info (/etc/lvm.cf is a text file copy)
Have a partition (s7, smallest size, 13MB is enough) on the boot disk
If necessary, create one in format -> disk 0, partition

3.
Identify the boot disk with
df -k /
It should show up as disk 0 in
format
Transfer the disk layout with format, disk -> 0 (with the OS),
partition, print
Note the layout.
Then quit, disk -> 1, partition, select -> original[0]
Check with print that it is identical, then label -> yes.

4.
We have two redundant s7 partitions for the meta-DBs.
Assuming the two disks are c1t0d0 and c1t1d0,
install with
metadb -c 3 -a -f c1t0d0s7 c1t1d0s7
metadb
(Three replicas per partition.)

5.
Create a sub-device d1 (concat/stripe) with the disk with the OS
metainit -f d1 1 1 c1t0d0s0
metastat

Create a one-way(yet degraded) mirror d0 on the sub-device
metainit d0 -m d1
metastat

Special treatment for bootable disk
metaroot d0
cat /etc/vfstab
tail /etc/system
reboot

6.
Create a sub-device d2 (concat/stripe) on the 2nd disk
metainit d2 1 1 c1t1d0s0
metastat

Add the sub-device to the mirror d0
metattach d0 d2
metastat
(Resync is in progress...)
Wait until resync is ready.

7.
For each additional OS partition s1,s3,...,s6 in /etc/vfstab
do
(example with s6):

Create a sub-device (concat/stripe) on the OS disk
metainit -f d61 1 1 c1t0d0s6
metastat d61

Create a one-way mirror
metainit d60 -m d61
metastat d60

Rename the corresponding entry in /etc/vfstab:
/dev/dsk/c1t0d0s6
to
/dev/md/dsk/d60
and
/dev/rdsk/c1t0d0s6
to
/dev/md/rdsk/d60

Verify /etc/vfstab contains no /c1t0d0 entry
reboot

8.
For each d*0 device in /etc/vfstab
do
(example with d60)

Create a sub-device on the 2nd disk
metainit d62 1 1 c1t1d0s6
metastat d62

Attach it to the mirror
metattach d60 d62
metastat d60

Do not more than two resyncs in parallel.

9.
Add "disk1" as an optional automatic boot device
eeprom boot-device
Example:
boot-device=disk net
Add disk1 after disk (and hope this alias works).
eeprom "boot-device=disk disk1 net"
eeprom boot-device

#to be sure prepare for recovery
ls -l /dev/dsk/c1t1d0s0 (get path for second path) such as
/sbus@3,0/SUNW,fas@3,8800000/sd@1,0:a

and create an alias at OpenBootPrompt if it doesnt exist
ok nvalias disk1 /sbus@3,0/SUNW,fas@3,8800000/sd@1,0:a
(or devalias disk1 /sbus@3,0/SUNW,fas@3,8800000/sd@1,0:a - depending on system)

10.
check for correct swap device:
dumpadm