Replace Primary boot disk at HP-UX
Posted by piyut on Wednesday, February 6, 2008
I have experience and case about “primary boot disk failed” at HP-UX 11.11. The server is superdome [hp high end server]. There are PVs stale at primary boot disk, the secondary disk [alternate boot disk] doesn’t have PV stale. My hp engineer recommended to replace the disk offline. Hoho…server is production and downtime is limited! I tried to search in goggle and sign in to itrc.com [hp forum] and i found the answer. I can replace primary boot disk failed in online replacement. Below, the steps i have done to replace my primary boot disk:
1. try to break mirror, but failed
2. unplug the bad disk
3. plug the new disk:
# vgcfgrestore -n /dev/vg00 /dev/rdsk/c0t0d0
vgcfgrestore: Cannot restore Physical Volume “/dev/dsk/c0t0d0″,
Detach the PV or detactivate the VG, before restoring the PV.
# pvchange -a n /dev/dsk/c0t0d0
# vgcfgrestore -n /dev/vg00 /dev/rdsk/c0t0d0
# pvchange -a y /dev/dsk/c0t0d0
# vgchange -a y /dev/vg00
# mkboot -l /dev/dsk/c0t0d0
# mkboot -a “hpux -lq” /dev/rdsk/c0t0d0
# lvlnboot -R –> vg automaticaly sync data
Rebooting server is needed if we want to check the new disk to booting.
jayesh patel said
hi piyut,
piyut, ok your information abt chenge mirroring disk but ,i think here we have to create a physical vol.ok if i am worngh so ,plz, give me ans.
piyut said
#Jayesg patel: i don’t know what you mean. can you tell me what you suggestion? the steps i have mentinoned above are all of what i have done to replace primary boot failed in my server. You can sign in at itrc.com and find the case about “primary disk boot failed”. many cases of it in itrc forum.
ddouthitt said
Hi Piyut!
I don’t believe that these instructions would work on an Itanium server. Am I right?
piyut said
#ddouthitt: yup, maybe! you can find at itrc.com. I have not more knowledge in Itanium server.
HP-guy said
Hi guys,
first of all – i see, that the question is related to HPUX 11.11 – it can only run on a PA-RISC server (not on itanium). The procedure for replacing the disk should be:
# pvchange -a n /dev/dsk/c0t0d0
replace the disk physically
# ioscan -fnCdisk – is the new disk visible ?
# vgcfgrestore /dev/vgxx /dev/rdsk/c0t0d0 (if vg00, boot header will be created automatically, no need to execute mkboot or pvcreate)
# vgchange -a y /dev/vgxx
# vgsync /dev/vgxx
HP-guy said
Hey, piyut – one thing more (what i learned from my expirience):
not always the disk with the stale extents is the faulty one. In rare cases the faulty is the one with the current extents … and its replacement requires restoring from ignite backup or OS-reinstall.
PS: about itaniums – the proceure should remain the same, but before that the new disk needs to be partitioned as usual on itaniums and devicefile should be like c0t0d0s2 (always s2 is the HPUX-partition)