Possible problems
A virtual disk can be online or offline. In the online
state, the virtual disk is active and all data is
accessible.
If a failure occurs, appropriate console warning messages and status information will be displayed. If a single drive fails on a RAID array (levels 1, 4 and 5), the virtual disk will remain online and all data will be accessible; in other circumstances, the virtual disk may go offline. Simple, concatenated and stripe virtual disk types always remain online as disk errors are passed back to the application.
Status information is displayed in the Virtual Disk Manager after the disk or piece information. Possible error states are:
See also:
The Virtual Disk Manager uses timestamps on RAID virtual disk configurations to ensure proper operation and data integrity. If a timestamp on one of the mirror virtual disk pieces becomes invalid, the piece will not be fully configured. You cannot set the timestamps to a known state on a mirror virtual disk that is online.
If this happens, the out-of-service piece on the mirror root device cannot be restored.
If the primary disk fails during the system reboot (when
mirroring the root disk for the first time), the
array will go offline and the system boot will fail. At
this point in the boot sequence, the system cannot switch
over to the secondary disk if it has not been completely
restored. Before replacing the primary drive or rebuilding
the system, remove power from the secondary disk and try to
boot the system. If the primary disk is not completely bad,
the system will boot. When the system boots,
unmirror the root device.
Once the problem has been corrected, try to mirror the root
device again.
When an array or mirrored virtual disk has a mounted filesystem and the array or mirror goes offline due to error conditions, the filesystem becomes unusable. At this point, the filesystem cannot be unmounted (much the same as a hard disk failure). The system must be rebooted to clear this condition.
An array or mirror may go offline when more than one piece is out of service or one piece is out of service and parity is out of date. To rectify this:
When the system has many RAID virtual disk configurations, with large cluster sizes or a heavy I/O load, the performance of the array may be reduced due to the high contention for system resources (buffers, kernel virtual memory, and so on). By increasing the total amount of physical memory, the system and array performance can be improved. See ``Warning messages'' for more information on driver error messages related to kernel virtual memory.
Warning messages (error messages that begin with WARNING:)
alert you to virtual disk failures that require immediate attention.
These messages are recorded in /usr/adm/messages and are
displayed on the console.
The virtual disk configuration is not supported. The driver
failed the virtual disk because only eight levels of
nesting are allowed by the disk array driver. The desired
configuration exceeds that level.
There are three possibilities:
The array or mirror is no longer functional. The driver was unable to access two disk pieces in the virtual disk or the driver was unable to access one disk piece in the virtual disk while the parity data was out of date. You must:
The system does not have enough memory to initialize the virtual disk driver or perform a driver operation. If this error message persists and there is no ``memory leak'' (a process that progressively uses up memory without releasing it), add additional physical memory to the system or reduce the virtual disk or other system resources. See ``Virtual disks'' in the Performance Guide.
The system does not have enough memory to allocate the necessary buffers for I/O. If this error message persists, consider adding additional physical memory to the system or reducing system resources.
The driver failed to access disk piece m when reading or writing the timestamp. Piece m will be taken out of service, but the array or mirror will still be functional.
Restore parity on the out-of-service piece. If the restore fails, the out-of-service drive should be repaired/replaced as soon as possible and the parity restored.
The virtual disk in not functional. The driver failed to open or access a disk piece when initializing a new configuration. The disk drive is either disabled or the disk piece is not defined properly. Repair or replace the failed drive or ensure the disk piece is available, then force the virtual disk online. If the virtual disk is an array or mirror, restore the parity.
There was a system crash while the reconfigure operation was in progress. The array is offline. You should:
The array or mirror is no longer functional. The driver was unable to access two disk pieces in the virtual disk. You should force the array or mirror online.
If the configuration fails, you should:
The timestamp on disk piece m of the array or mirror has become desynchronized. You should:
Timestamps for the disk pieces, which make up the array or mirror, are out of synchronization. One or more of the disk pieces, which make up the array or mirror, were accessed individually prior to reboot or an enable. You should:
The driver was unable to access a disk piece and attempted
to replace the failed disk (the disk piece will be taken
out of service) with the spare disk piece. While updating
the data on the spare piece, an I/O error
occurred. The spare piece will not replace the
out-of-service piece in the virtual disk. The array or
mirror is still functional, but you should replace the
out-of-service data drive and spare drive as soon as
possible.
The virtual disk was fully operational prior to a system
crash. Data on the parity piece may not be accurate. The
system will automatically restore parity during boot, so
no intervention is necessary in this case.
The virtual disk had one piece out of service prior to a system crash. Data on the virtual disk may not be accurate. Repair or replace the out-of-service drive and restore the virtual disk data from backups as described in ``Restoring a scheduled filesystem backup''.
The daemon was not spawned during reboot. RAID virtual disks may not be operational. Reboot the system and use ps -aef to make sure the vddaemon is running. If the problem occurs again, the system may be corrupted. Deconfigure the virtual disks and reinstall the Virtual Disk Manager package.
At least one vddaemon must be running. On multiprocessor systems, one is started per CPU for extra performance. If only one is running, then virtual disk performance may be reduced.
The driver was unable to configure disk piece m of the virtual disk. Piece m will be taken out of service. The array or mirror is functional, but you should repair or replace the disk drive as soon as possible and restore the parity of the failed drive. See ``Repairing a failed drive'' for more information.
The driver failed to access disk piece m of the virtual disk. This disk piece will be taken out of service. The array or mirror is functional, but you should repair or replace the out-of-service disk drive as soon as possible and restore the parity for the failed drive.
The maximum number of outstanding jobs for the specified
virtual device has been reached.
Restore the parity again.
See
``Virtual disks'' in the Performance Guide.
A reconfiguration on vdisk n was in progress and was interrupted. The driver attempted to restart the reconfiguration from the interrupted point, but could not. The virtual disk will be offline. You should:
A write to dktab piece m of vdisk0 failed. Configuration information is not valid on that backup piece. You can either:
Reconfiguration of the indicated virtual disk cannot be
restarted if it is interrupted before completion. Verify
that enough spool pieces are configured in
vdisk0 for as many simultaneous fail-safe
reconfigurations as will be executed. See
``Adding a configuration backup''
for information on modifying the virtual disk database.
The piece number x of vdisk0 is too
small to back up the current configuration of configured
virtual disks. Increase the length of that
piece or reconfigure vdisk0 to include a larger
disk piece.
See
``Adding a configuration backup''
for information on modifying the virtual disk database.
Notice messages (error messages that begin with
NOTICE:) alert you to error conditions where
recovery has already occurred, but some operator
intervention is necessary. Notice messages are recorded
in /usr/adm/messages and are displayed on the
console.
A virtual disk has been configured for the first time.
One of the data pieces failed in the virtual disk. The
spare piece will be brought online to replace the failed
drive.
One of the data pieces failed in the virtual disk. The
spare piece was brought online to replace the failed
drive. Replace or repair the out-of-service data drive and
restore the parity for the out-of-service disk piece.
See
``Repairing a failed drive''
for more information.
A disk piece was taken out of service in the current or new
configuration during the reconfigure operation. Either
the current or new configuration contains a spare. The
spare piece will not be brought online during the
reconfigure operation. After the reconfiguration completes,
the spare will be operational.
A bad block was detected and the disk array driver was
unable to access piece m of the virtual disk
during its first attempt. The driver recreated the data,
retried the job, and was able to access the disk piece
successfully on the second attempt. The array or mirror is
functional. Ignore all previous bad block
messages displayed by the underlying disk driver.
During error recovery, there was a job time-out for one of
the disk pieces in the virtual disk. The disk array driver
will take the disk piece out of service and continue
processing all remaining jobs.
Restore the parity
on the out-of-service disk piece.
The maximum number of outstanding jobs for the disk array
driver has been reached. The driver will not process any
more jobs until most of the outstanding jobs are complete.
This limit is controlled by the VDJOBS kernel
parameter. See
``Using configure to change kernel resources'' in the Performance Guide
for information on changing kernel parameters.
The maximum number of outstanding jobs for the specified virtual device has been reached. The driver will not process any more jobs for this device until most of the outstanding jobs for the virtual disk are complete. This limit is controlled by the VDUNITJOBS kernel parameter under the Virtual disks item of performance tunables. See ``Virtual disks'' in the Performance Guide.