VERITAS Volume Manager 3.5 Release Notes (August 2002)

Chapter 1

VERITAS Volume Manager™ Release Notes

Patches and Fixes in This Version

• Workaround: Do not attempt to deﬁne the device for VxVM.

Duplicate Device Name Creation in rootdg

• Problem: When you create new volumes in the rootdg disk group, two sets of device nodes are created:

under both /dev/vx/[r]dsk/ and /dev/vx/[r]dsk/rootdg. Although either path can be used for mkfs(1M) or

mount(1M), the duplicate sets of device node names can be confusing.

• Workaround: We recommend using the full pathname to rootdg disk devices in command line arguments.

This is consistent with the naming of device nodes in other disk groups. For example, to mount a rootdg

volume use:

# mount -F vxfs /dev/vx/dsk/rootdg/vol01 /vol01

Do not use /dev/vx/dsk/vol01 as the pathname.

VEA always uses the full pathname.

vxrecover Needs at Least One ACTIVE or CLEAN Plex to Start a Volume

• Problem: The vxrecover command starts a volume only if it has at least one plex that is in the ACTIVE or

CLEAN state and is not marked STALE, IOFAIL, REMOVED, or NODAREC. If such a plex is not found,

VxVM assumes that the volume no longer contains valid up-to-date data, so the volume is not started

automatically. A plex can be marked STALE or IOFAIL as a result of a disk failure or an I/O failure.

• Workaround: In such cases, to force the volume to start, use the following command:

# vxvol -f start volume

However, try to determine what caused the problem before you run this command. It is likely that the

volume needs to be restored from backup, and it is also possible that the disk needs to be replaced.

Free Space Reported Differently

• Problem: vxdg free reports free space differently than vxprint -ht.

• Workaround: None.

Subdisks are not Aligned on Cylinder Boundaries After a Relayout

• When relayout is performed on a volume, Volume Manager does not grow subdisks such that they end on

cylinder boundaries. If you subsequently increase the size of the volume, its subdisks are not grown using

contiguous disk space.

• To ensure that a volume’s subdisks are grown using contiguous disk space, specify the attribute

layout=nodiskalign to vxassist, as shown here:

# vxassist growby volume length layout=nodiskalign

NOTE Specifying layout=nodiskalign permanently enforces this layout policy on the volume.

Resizing Layered Volumes Fails while Resynchronization is Ongoing.

• Problem: Due to the current implementation to handle the resize of layered volumes, it is recommended

that you do not grow or shrink layered volumes (stripe-mirror, concat-mirror, and so on) while

resynchronization is ongoing.

Internally, VxVM converts the layout of layered volumes and updates the conﬁguration database before it

shrinks or grows their sizes. This causes any ongoing operation, such as the resynchronization, to fail.