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adding a new drive

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DedeMole

Programmer
Aug 30, 2001
45
US
I have V880 server with 10 disks installed and working. Disk0 is the OS and the other disks are RAID5 together. I have a new disk to add and I want it to be part of the OS and not the RAID. The new disk is exatly the same as all the other disks. And I'm using Solaris 8. How do I add Disk 11 as /Backup-Data to the OS partition disk scheme???
 
oldstyle: plugin the disk (V880 is hotplugable?) run 'drvconfig; disks; devlinks'; run 'format' -> lookup the new disk, pratition it to your needs; edit /etc/vfstab to mount the disk whereever you want eg. /BackupData; do a 'newfs ...' on that disk and run 'mount /BackupData', finished.

newstyle: read man devfsadm (this is a substitutefor drvconfig; disks; devlinks), run the command with flags, continue like mentioned above with format.

Do you need detailed help on the commands?

Regards
-- Franz
Sorry I'm not a native spaeker, I'm from Munich, Germany - "Home of the Whopper", oh no, "Home of the Oktoberfest" ;-)
Solaris System Manager; I used to work for Sun Microsystems Support (EMEA) for 5 years
 
daFranze,
THANKS!!! and yes I'm a idiot so all commands you give me are great.

I have a follow-on question to before. What if I want to partition the new drive to add more room to my / and /usr/openwin and /var along with making the new partition /backup-data is that possible?

And do I really have to run 'drvconfig; disks; devlinks' before running format?


 
>> And do I really have to run 'drvconfig; disks; devlinks' before running format?

hmm, I'm not sure, there is a new daemon running Solaris 9 called devfsadmd, so maybe it takes care of all the /dev and /devices tree; but running these three commands does not harm your Machine...

>> I have a follow-on question to before. What if I want to partition the new drive to add more room to my / and /usr/openwin and /var along with making the new partition /backup-data is that possible?

not really; you can add some links to any other Filesystem, but the Filesystem itself does not grow; eg, if you KNOW you need more space in /var/tmp you can make a new Filesystem and mount it on /var/tmp but if any application uses space in /var/blabla/tmp it will not use the space you offer under /var/tmp (resp. /BackupData)

If you need more space under /, /usr or /var the 100% solution is: backup the Machine (shutdown it, boot from cdrom, backup the filesystems using eg. ufsdump), change the layout of your disks, create a new larger filesystem and restore it.

If you need more help, just ask...

Regards
-- Franz
Sorry I'm not a native spaeker, I'm from Munich, Germany - "Home of the Whopper", oh no, "Home of the Oktoberfest" ;-)
Solaris System Manager; I used to work for Sun Microsystems Support (EMEA) for 5 years
 
Franz,
I like your final solution to create new larger filesystem. I won't be able to do that until after Easter. Anyway will I need some tapes to do the ufsdump? I have a DLT tape drive (not sure how to use it yet) and a 8mm tape drive would these work??? Or is there another way to do the ufsdump? And how would recreating the filesystem effect my RAID5 (the 9 drives tied together)? Would I have to rebuild that too?

By the way THANKS for the info it gives me hope to fix my problems.

Dede
 
you can use ufsdump with tapes (default it writes to /dev/rmt/0, which is the "first tapedrive on the system" - it does not matter if DLT or 8mm, the name is always the same) or with files (or remote files)
eg make a dump of c0t3d0s0 to local drive:
ufsdump 0f /dev/rmt/0cbn /dev/rdsk/c0t3d0s0

eg make a dump of c0t3d0s0 to a remote drive (edit ~/.rhosts for login without password!)
ufsdump 0f remotehost:/dev/rmt/0cbn /dev/rdsk/c0t3d0s0

Both DLT and 8mm is ok; I think DLT would be faster and has mor capacity per Tape!

RAID5: yes and no; I recommend to make a backup of this filesystem, too. Any activities on the rootfilesystem SOULD NOT HARM the RAID5 but do you know Murpy's Laws!? ;)
BTW 9 Drives for RAID5 is not realy recommended (but will work of course)

Regards
-- Franz
Sorry I'm not a native spaeker, I'm from Munich, Germany - "Home of the Whopper", oh no, "Home of the Oktoberfest" ;-)
Solaris System Manager; I used to work for Sun Microsystems Support (EMEA) for 5 years
 
Franz,
OK I'll work on my ufsdump of the system now so that when I can "rebuild" the system I'm good. THANKS for the code help, I really needed it.

If a RAID5 is not recommended for my 9 drives what is?

I originally was going to just mount all 9 drives to the same partition (/data) but I was told I had to RAID5 the 9 drives together. Of course this was from a man who got fired but that is a whole different story.

Again thanks for your help and your recommendation is highly wanted about my 9 drives.

Dede
 
I never RAID5! I always stripe+mirror!

I recommend not more than 5-6 Disks in a RAID5; RAID5 is poor Security, only 1 of 9 Disks may fail;
Sometimes you do not have a choice, so I suggest to RAID5 just 8 Disks and offer a HotSpare.

This is my personal opinion! Someone else might see it different.

Regards
-- Franz
Sorry I'm not a native spaeker, I'm from Munich, Germany - "Home of the Whopper", oh no, "Home of the Oktoberfest" ;-)
Solaris System Manager; I used to work for Sun Microsystems Support (EMEA) for 5 years
 
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