Originally posted by: SystemAdmin

Hi,

I have Veritas VCS (Cluster System) and CVM (Cluster Volume Manager) installed on two of my AIX 5L (5.1 and 5.2) machines. I am trying to add new FC luns (RAID0) to them to have FS's on them, but the moment I run a 'cfgmgr' on the machines, I see the disks but lspv shows them as VeritasVolumes. Whereas there are no existing veritas disk group or volume currently on the machines.
Also when I try to create GPFS on these disks I can't, whereas I can successfully create Veritas CFS or VxFS on these disks.

root@gem/var/adm/raslsdev -Cc disk
hdisk0 Available 1S-08-00-8,0 16 Bit LVD SCSI Disk Drive
hdisk1 Available 1S-08-00-5,0 Other SCSI Disk Drive
hdisk2 Available 1H-08-02 Other FC SCSI Disk Drive
hdisk3 Available 1H-08-02 Other FC SCSI Disk Drive
hdisk4 Available 1H-08-02 Other FC SCSI Disk Drive
hdisk5 Available 1H-08-02 Other FC SCSI Disk Drive

root@gem/var/adm/raslspv
hdisk0 0051606edb2311ab rootvg active
hdisk1 0051606e823aac78 rootvg active
hdisk3 none VeritasVolumes
hdisk4 none VeritasVolumes
hdisk2 none VeritasVolumes
hdisk5 none VeritasVolumes

Here hdisk2, hdisk3, hdisk4 and hdisk5 are new FC luns I got configured.

Please advice.

Thanks,
Manoj

Originally posted by: CRM

These disks have been in a VCS volume before.

Read the manual for chpv:

-C HDiskName Clears the owning volume manager from a disk. This flag is only valid when running as the root user. This command will fail to clear LVM as the owning volume manager if the disk is part of an imported LVM volume group.

Run this command against the disk and then rmdev and re-run cfgmgr.

regards

Chris

Originally posted by: SystemAdmin

Thanks Chris, I did that but no avail.

Originally posted by: CRM

I think I confused myself reading your post, I assumed that you wanted to remove a disk from a VCS configuration (something I have had the issue above with in the past) but I think I just need to check that.

What are you trying to accomplish here?

Add the disks?

If the server has Veritas installed on it then surely the behaviour described (of describing them as Veritas volume disks) is correct?

Can you not just run the mkvg Veritas equivalent command?

regards

Originally posted by: SystemAdmin

Ohk lets see...I have Veritas VCS and CVM installed on the server as well as GPFS. I added disks and want to create GPFS on them, where as my first "mmcrnsd" command for the disk fails with error "which means : server has no write permission". If I try to create CFS or VxFS on these disks then I succeed.
The moment I do cfgmgr to add the disks I see them as VeritasVolumes in lspv output and my doubt was, Veritas was reserving the disks for some strange reason and hence not allowing them to be used by GPFS.

Does that explain?

Thanks,
Manoj

Originally posted by: CRM

I can see no evidence that GPFS supports veritas volumes.

Does not really make sense, GPFS is a filesystem, why would you be creating a filesystem on a filesystem.

I would suggest that you remove these disks from veritas control (I am assuming there is a way to do this with Veritas) or uninstall veritas and try again.

regards

Chris

Originally posted by: SystemAdmin

Chris,

I am not trying to create GPFS on Veritas, I just want to create GPFS on a disk and when I add that disk (FC lun) to the server the disk is shown as part of Veritas (don't know why??). Where as there is no Veritas volume or disk group existing at this moment. Yeah there is a way to remove disk from Veritas VM control and I did that already.
I afraid, I can't un-install Veritas from the server.

FYI,

I can create AIX VG on these disks but not GPFS.

Thanks,
Manoj

Originally posted by: unixgrl

Let me start with hoping the only reason you'd have both GPFS and Veritas CFS is because you are migrating from one to the other. You should never run both just because of the support nightmare.

That said, you should be able to clear the Veritas meta-data from this LUN. It was obviously a Veritas disk at some point.

/usr/lib/vxvm/bin/vxdiskunsetup -C yourdisk
chpv -C yourdisk
vxdisk rm yourdisk

Now you should be able to use the disk for LVM or GPFS. Then you can run "vxdisk scandisks" and see it show up as such. Do not scan the disks until after you have re-used your disk as LVM. The vxdisk rm should remove whatever reserve may be on it.

If all of that still doesn't work, call your vendor for help.

As a last resort, you can try to zero out the private region with dd.
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/yourdisk bs=1024k count=2