Conference aosg::lsm

794.0. "Can't set LSM swap volume preference" by NNTPD::"jm@uvo.dec.com" (John McNulty) Mon May 12 1997 12:10

I have a customer who's system (one half of a DECsafe ASE cluster) failed
to save a crash dump after a forced crash.  The error message produced at
boot time was:

        savecore: Can't set LSM swap volume preference in 
        /dev/vol/rootdg/swapvol

From info in other notes in this conference I believe this can be caused
by three situations:

  1.  No rootvol volume
  2.  With multiple swap devices (and LSM) /dev/vol/rootdg/swapvol isn't
      the primary swap device.
  3.  The minor number for the device file /dev/vol/rootdg/swapvol isn't
      a value of 1.

But none of these situations fit the customer system.  I got them to send
in the output from the commands:

        # file /dev/vol/rootdg/swapvol

..result..   /dev/vol/rootdg/swapvol:        block special (40/1)

        # volprint -vht
        # voldisk list

..results..

     # volprint -vht
     V  NAME         USETYPE      KSTATE   STATE    LENGTH   READPOL  PREFPLEX
     PL NAME         VOLUME       KSTATE   STATE    LENGTH   LAYOUT   ST-WIDTH

     MODE
     SD NAME         PLEX         PLOFFS   DISKOFFS LENGTH   DISK-NAME   
DEVICE
     
     v  rootvol      root         ENABLED  ACTIVE   300000   ROUND    -
     pl rootvol-01   rootvol      ENABLED  ACTIVE   300000   CONCAT   -       

     RW
     sd rz0-01       rootvol-01   0        299984   16       rz0          rz0
     sd rz0-02       rootvol-01   16       0        299984   rz0          rz0
     pl rootvol-02   rootvol      ENABLED  ACTIVE   300000   CONCAT   -       

     RW
     sd rz1-01       rootvol-02   0        299984   16       rz1          rz1
     sd rz1-02       rootvol-02   16       0        299984   rz1          rz1
     
     v  swapvol      swap         ENABLED  ACTIVE   2047472  ROUND    -
     pl swapvol-01   swapvol      ENABLED  ACTIVE   2047472  CONCAT   -       

     RW
     sd rz0b-01      swapvol-01   0        0        2047472  rz0b         rz0b
     pl swapvol-02   swapvol      ENABLED  ACTIVE   2047472  CONCAT   -       

     RW
     sd rz1b-01      swapvol-02   0        0        2047472  rz1b         rz1b
     
     v  volrz0d      gen          ENABLED  ACTIVE   1655984  SELECT   -
     pl volrz0d-01   volrz0d      ENABLED  ACTIVE   1655984  CONCAT   -       

     RW
     sd advfs_rz0d-01 volrz0d-01   0        0        1655984  advfs_rz0d  
rz0d
     pl volrz0d-02   volrz0d      ENABLED  ACTIVE   1655984  CONCAT   -       

     RW
     sd disk1d-01    volrz0d-02   0        0        1655984  disk1d       rz1d
     
..and.. 
     
     # voldisk list
     DEVICE       TYPE      DISK         GROUP        STATUS
     rz0          sliced    rz0          rootdg       online
     rz0b         nopriv    rz0b         rootdg       online
     rz0d         nopriv    advfs_rz0d   rootdg       online
     rz0h         simple    rz0h         rootdg       online
     rz1          sliced    rz1          rootdg       online
     rz17         sliced    -            -            offline
     rz18         sliced    -            -            offline
     rz19         sliced    -            -            offline
     rz1b         nopriv    rz1b         rootdg       online
     rz1d         nopriv    disk1d       rootdg       online
     rz1h         simple    disk01       rootdg       online
     rz20         sliced    -            -            offline
     rz25         sliced    -            -            offline
     rz26         sliced    -            -            offline
     rz27         sliced    -            -            offline
     rz28         sliced    -            -            offline
     rz29         sliced    -            -            offline
     rz37         sliced    -            -            offline
     
    
Anyone got any suggestions?  I'm not sure where to go from here.

Regards,

John
--------------------------------------------------------
John McNulty                     | Email: jm@uvo.dec.com
UK CSC, Unix Support Group       | Tel: (44) 1256 373862
Digital Equipment Corporation    | DTN: 833-3862

[Posted by WWW Notes gateway]

Could the volume read policy have anything to do with this?  I've
asked the customer to send me the output from # volprint -lg rootdg.
And if the read policy is ROUND rather than PREFER, is it possible
that the dump was written to one plex, but savecore (when setting
VOL_SET_SWAP_PREF) picked the wrong one to read from?

John
[Posted by WWW Notes gateway]

Come on folks, someone must be able to shed some light on this.  

John
[Posted by WWW Notes gateway]

Hi

 If you require this for a customer, you should file a CLD/IPMT.

This conference is not a support mechanism...

> If you require this for a customer, you should file a CLD/IPMT.
>
> This conference is not a support mechanism...

I'm aware of that.  But getting an answer in NOTES (if there is one to
be had) is an order of magnitude more cost effective than raising an
IPMT.  To raise an IPMT for this, I will have to send either Checkit
or UniCensus to the customer, get him to run and post back the results.
Hours of work, postage costs and days of delay.  Then it takes an hour
or so to properly write up the IPMT, and then requires the involvement
of at least two administrators to log, transfer, and then route the
IPMT (one at my end, one at yours) and manage the dialogue between the
engineer and myself.  I've no idea what kind of paper work or hoops your
engineers then have to jump through to work the call.  Plus I believe
that Engineering are already swamped with more IPMT's than they would
wish to have.

So please excuse me if I try to exhaust all possibilites before finally
resorting to an IPMT.
    
[Posted by WWW Notes gateway]

    did you check to ensure the rc.config value for swap
    was modified after setting up swapvol?  -jeff