Uable to Initialize a disk using vxdisksetup on Redhat Linux
Article ID: 100027642
Updated On:
Description
Error Message
# vxdisksetup -i sdp
VxVM vxdisk ERROR V-5-1-5433 Device sdp: init failed:Disk is not usable
Cause
VxVM try to use full disk name when vxdisksetup is used to initialize the disk , VxVM will treat "p" character as partition delimiter and when a disk with sdp name is used then ending p or any character after p and including p will be ignored e.g sdp will be trimmed to sd and sdap will be trimmed to sda , due to this VxVM is unable to read RAW geometry information from disk and initialization will fail. VxVM debug level 9 will show following error message.
09/04 12:08:39: VxVM vxconfigd DEBUG V-5-1-7628 get_geometry_info() failed for /dev/vx/rdmp/sd error -1/2
09/04 12:08:39: VxVM vxconfigd DEBUG V-5-1-23331 cds_get_geometry: sector_size1 512 track_size1 189 num_heads1 255 num_cyl1 1294 disk_size1 62364330
09/04 12:08:39: VxVM vxconfigd DEBUG V-5-1-23332 cds_get_geometry: sector_size2 0 track_size2 0 num_heads2 0 num_cyl2 0 disk_size2 0
09/04 12:08:39: VxVM vxconfigd DEBUG V-5-1-23330 cds_get_geometry: geomp->sector_size 0 geomp->num_heads 0 geomp->num_sectors_per_track 0 geomp->num_cylinders 0
Resolution
Currently Veritas engineering is working on fixing the issue in etrack e2930767 for future version of VxVM , This article will be updated when a Patch is available. Following workaround can be used to rename the disk and then use vxdisksetup to initialize it.
Workaround
rename the disk access name to something which does not contain letter "p" e.g
# vxdmpadm setattr dmpnode sdp name=sdaz
Applies To
Operating System : Redhat Linux
VxVM 5.1SP1RP2P3 and higher
Disk Access name is displayed as sdp in vxdisk list output e.g
# vxdisk list
DEVICE TYPE DISK GROUP STATUS
sda auto:none - - online invalid
sdb auto:none - - online invalid
sdp auto:none - - online invalid
Issue/Introduction
