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I am running solarix x86 on a dell r810; I have mirrored the two internal 300Gb disks and accepted the default directory structure during the installation. Oracle 11g R2 was then installed with a view to using this machine in a DR scenario.
The following steps were performed to create two disks on the loopback filesystem which could then be presented to orace ASM to create a disk group:
# pwd
/export/home/asm
# mkfile 5G asm_disk1
# mkfile 5G asm_disk2
# ls -lt
total 20981792
-rw------T 1 root root 5368709120 Oct 20 08:46 asm_disk2
-rw------T 1 root root 5368709120 Oct 20 08:43 asm_disk1
#
# chown oracle:dba asm_disk*
# ls -lt
total 20981792
-rw------T 1 oracle dba 5368709120 Oct 20 08:46 asm_disk2
-rw------T 1 oracle dba 5368709120 Oct 20 08:43 asm_disk1
# chmod 660 asm_disk*
# ls -lt
total 20981792
-rw-rw---- 1 oracle dba 5368709120 Oct 20 08:46 asm_disk2
-rw-rw---- 1 oracle dba 5368709120 Oct 20 08:43 asm_disk1
#

# lofiadm -a /export/home/asm/asm_disk1 /dev/lofi/1
# echo $?
0
# lofiadm -a /export/home/asm/asm_disk2 /dev/lofi/2
# echo $?
0
#

# ls -lt /dev/lofi/1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 29 Oct 20 08:53 /dev/lofi/1 -> ../../devices/pseudo/lofi@0:1
# ls -lt /dev/lofi/2
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 29 Oct 20 08:53 /dev/lofi/2 -> ../../devices/pseudo/lofi@0:2
#

# ls -lt /devices/pseudo/lofi@0:1
brw------- 1 root sys 144, 1 Oct 20 08:53 /devices/pseudo/lofi@0:1
# ls -lt /devices/pseudo/lofi@0:2
brw------- 1 root sys 144, 2 Oct 20 08:53 /devices/pseudo/lofi@0:2
#

# mknod nasm_disk1 c 144 1
# echo $?
0
# mknod nasm_disk2 c 144 2
# echo $?
0
# ls -lt
total 20981792
crw-r--r-- 1 root root 144, 2 Oct 20 09:00 nasm_disk2
crw-r--r-- 1 root root 144, 1 Oct 20 09:00 nasm_disk1
-rw-rw---- 1 oracle dba 5368709120 Oct 20 08:46 asm_disk2
-rw-rw---- 1 oracle dba 5368709120 Oct 20 08:43 asm_disk1
#
The two nasm_disk* disks can then be discovered by Oracle ASM and a disk group can be created.
After a reboot, there were difficulties with the Oracle ASM instance. After much investigation, it was found that the lofiadm changes needed to be reapplied:
# ls -lL /dev/lofi/*
/dev/lofi/1: No such file or directory
/dev/lofi/2: No such file or directory
#
I had to delete the nasm_disk* disks, rm nasm_disk*, and the /dev files:
# pwd
/dev/lofi
# ls -lt
total 4
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 29 Oct 20 11:22 2 -> ../../devices/pseudo/lofi@0:2
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 29 Oct 20 11:22 1 -> ../../devices/pseudo/lofi@0:1
# ls -lL
./1: No such file or directory
./2: No such file or directory
total 0
#
# rm 1
# rm 2
then started again with the lofiadm commands onwards above, which successfully reconfigured the loopback file system.
My question is:
Is it possible to get the loopback filesystem config to persist across the reboot?
The two possible courses of action so far are to reinstall the OS with two spare partitions that can be picked up from /dev/rdsk, or to write a script to reapply the lofi config at boot time.
Is it possible to get the loopback filesystem config to persist across the reboot?
Thanks,
J

put the filesystems in vfstab? Did you do that?

I did try this; first I amended vfstab adding:

/export/home/asm/nasm_disk1 - /dev/lofi/1 lofs no yes rw
/export/home/asm/nasm_disk2 - /dev/lofi/2 lofs no yes rw

On reboot was the server was uncontactable. I connected via the iDRAC and removed the entries from vfstab, rebooted and could login again.

I created mount points using mkdir and mounted the devices using mount lofs, this time using 2Gb file systems to speed things up:

# mkdir -p /u02/asm1
# mkdir -p /u02/asm2

# cd /export/home/asm
# mkfile 2G asm_disk1
# mkfile 2G asm_disk2
#

# pwd
/export/home/asm
# ls -lt
total 8392736
-rw------T 1 root root 2147483648 Oct 19 14:01 asm_disk2
-rw------T 1 root root 2147483648 Oct 19 14:00 asm_disk1
# chown oracle:dba asm*
# chmod 660 asm*
# ls -lt
total 8392736
-rw-rw---- 1 oracle dba 2147483648 Oct 19 14:01 asm_disk2
-rw-rw---- 1 oracle dba 2147483648 Oct 19 14:00 asm_disk1
#

# mount -F lofs /export/home/asm/asm_disk1 /u02/asm1
# echo $?
0
# mount -F lofs /export/home/asm/asm_disk2 /u02/asm2
# echo $?
0

This would have allowed a mount in vfstab, but the files weren't usable. The /u02/asm* mount points did not show as 2Gb nor were they usable for ASM in when the ASM discovery path pointed there.

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