Troubleshooting

Abstract

Fixing VxVM related problems should never be a game of trial and error. If you are going to mess around in the depths of volume management you need to know what you are doing! For this reason we have decided to write this chapter as a training lesson more than a direct hands-on guide so that you do your training long before you actually need the skill. If you are not familiar with the procedures you should not start repairing serial split brain conditions or other advanced errors in large-scale production systems. So take your time and learn the troubleshooting techniques thoroughly first. There is enough material in this chapter to make you an expert if you care to read it and actually do the exercises. So sit down in front of your VxVM host, get yourself your favorite non-alcoholic beverage and let's begin:

In order to test several troubleshooting scenarios, we need procedures to simulate some kinds of disk outage, because we do not want to actually destroy disks - even if it may take all of your self control not to destroy all those infernal machines with an axe! First, we need to simulate a completely destroyed disk, then a disk temporarily unavailable, but still physically healthy, and finally a disk with some unusable regions on it.