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From: jay on 12 Mar 2010 12:39
long story on how i got into this state, so i'll skip it.

i'm up and running on non-mirrored disks. somewhere, there's
something that
thinks i've got a bunch of svm (metadevices) set up. i cannot clear
them.
metadetach, metaclear, and so on all return
"stale databases"
i've cleared and re-initialized the metadb. i've re-partitioned to
try to
get the stubs to go away. i've re-partitioned and newfs'ed the
partitions
that formerly held the metadbs.
if i re-make the metadbs the md.cf file fills up with the old devices.
/etc/system and /etc/vfstab are cleaned of references to metadevices.

where's the remaining thing i have to kill off? as it is, i can't do
anything
to re-mirror the disks.

thanks.

j.
From: jay on 12 Mar 2010 13:15
On Mar 12, 11:39 am, jay <g...(a)arlut.utexas.edu> wrote:
> long story on how i got into this state, so i'll skip it.
>
> i'm up and running on non-mirrored disks.  somewhere, there's
> something that
> thinks i've got a bunch of svm (metadevices) set up.  i cannot clear
> them.
> metadetach, metaclear, and so on all return
> "stale databases"
> i've cleared and re-initialized the metadb.  i've re-partitioned to
> try to
> get the stubs to go away.  i've re-partitioned and newfs'ed the
> partitions
> that formerly held the metadbs.
> if i re-make the metadbs the md.cf file fills up with the old devices.
> /etc/system and /etc/vfstab are cleaned of references to metadevices.
>
> where's the remaining thing i have to kill off?  as it is, i can't do
> anything
> to re-mirror the disks.
>
> thanks.
>
> j.

hmm. well, i've gotten out of my jam, though why this worked i dunno.

1. i commented out the "do not edit" part of /kernel/drv/md.conf .
that
was the mddb_bootlist1=... line. recall that i was booted and running
off the ordinary disk slices, so... that doesn't add up completely,
to me.

2. i rebooted. i'd rebooted before. it's possible that this was the
first
time i'd rebooted with NO metadbs around.

at that point, once i came up, metastat -p still had all the old
cruft, but
i was able to do the metaclears and so on. so now i'm mirrored again.

I REALIZE THIS ANSWER HAS HOLES IN IT. i've fumbled around for
three hours on this, and i can't tell which end is up. so, for
example,
i can't tell you whether i had put back empty metadbs before i tried
the metaclears. sorry. i think the metadbs were deleted, not empty.
i could be wrong.

was there a better way? obviously, taking everything apart cleanly
is better, but i didn't have that option. was the magic to delete
the metadbs and reboot? did emptying md.conf help? once it was
enough to clean up /etc/system and clean up /etc/vfstab. so that's
how i started.

j.
From: Ian Collins on 12 Mar 2010 17:00
On 03/13/10 06:39 AM, jay wrote:
> long story on how i got into this state, so i'll skip it.
>
> i'm up and running on non-mirrored disks. somewhere, there's
> something that
> thinks i've got a bunch of svm (metadevices) set up. i cannot clear
> them.
> metadetach, metaclear, and so on all return
> "stale databases"
> i've cleared and re-initialized the metadb. i've re-partitioned to
> try to
> get the stubs to go away. i've re-partitioned and newfs'ed the
> partitions
> that formerly held the metadbs.
> if i re-make the metadbs the md.cf file fills up with the old devices.
> /etc/system and /etc/vfstab are cleaned of references to metadevices.
>
> where's the remaining thing i have to kill off? as it is, i can't do
> anything
> to re-mirror the disks.

Use ZFS.

SVM setups tend to hang around a system like the smell of a dead rat,
you never can quite get rid if it!

--
Ian Collins
From: jay on 12 Mar 2010 17:53
On Mar 12, 4:00 pm, Ian Collins <ian-n...(a)hotmail.com> wrote:
> On 03/13/10 06:39 AM, jay wrote:
>
>
>
> > long story on how i got into this state, so i'll skip it.
>
> > i'm up and running on non-mirrored disks.  somewhere, there's
> > something that
> > thinks i've got a bunch of svm (metadevices) set up.  i cannot clear
> > them.
> > metadetach, metaclear, and so on all return
> > "stale databases"
> > i've cleared and re-initialized the metadb.  i've re-partitioned to
> > try to
> > get the stubs to go away.  i've re-partitioned and newfs'ed the
> > partitions
> > that formerly held the metadbs.
> > if i re-make the metadbs the md.cf file fills up with the old devices.
> > /etc/system and /etc/vfstab are cleaned of references to metadevices.
>
> > where's the remaining thing i have to kill off?  as it is, i can't do
> > anything
> > to re-mirror the disks.
>
> Use ZFS.
>
> SVM setups tend to hang around a system like the smell of a dead rat,
> you never can quite get rid if it!
>
> --
> Ian Collins

hmm. yeah... you've just made me realize that i think, at home,
i've done the worst of both worlds -- put a zfs filesystem on an
svm mirror. i better check that.

but aren't there some issues w/ using zfs when the boot disk gets
corrupted? i saw a problem w/ that somewhere, saved the solution.
(it's at home.) problems with the boot archive? i don't know my way
around the boot archive, so i've been loathe to go there. at home
i set up zfs before i heard of any problems.

thanks, though.

j.
From: Ian Collins on 12 Mar 2010 18:13
On 03/13/10 11:53 AM, jay wrote:
> On Mar 12, 4:00 pm, Ian Collins<ian-n...(a)hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Use ZFS.
>>
>> SVM setups tend to hang around a system like the smell of a dead rat,
>> you never can quite get rid if it!

[best not to quote sigs]

> hmm. yeah... you've just made me realize that i think, at home,
> i've done the worst of both worlds -- put a zfs filesystem on an
> svm mirror. i better check that.

Never do that!

> but aren't there some issues w/ using zfs when the boot disk gets
> corrupted? i saw a problem w/ that somewhere, saved the solution.
> (it's at home.) problems with the boot archive? i don't know my way
> around the boot archive, so i've been loathe to go there. at home
> i set up zfs before i heard of any problems.

Boot archive corruptions can still occur, but they are rarer these days
and they are largely unrelated to the underlying filesystem. A ZFS
mirror boot drive will give you a number of advantages, including
healing corruption on one side of the mirror rather than mirroring it!
You can protect against boot archive corruptions with snapshots.

--
Ian Collins
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