Mounting soft partitions from network boot?

admin — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 22:30:24 +0000

Let’s say you hosed your root partition and have to boot from CD or network. You have data on soft partitions you need to access, which aren’t very easily accessible, because they are…well..soft. Here’s the answer. Just import the SVM configuration from the root disk and mount it up.

# mount -o ro /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s0 /a
# cp /a/kernel/drv/md.conf /kernel/drv/md.conf
# umount /a
# update_drv -fmd
Cannot unload module: md
Will be unloaded upon reboot.
Forcing update of md.conf.
devfsadm: mkdir fialed for /dev 0xled: Read-only file system
devfsadm: inst_sync failed for /etc/path_to_inst.1359: Read-only file system
devfsadm: WARNING: failed to update /etc/path_to_inst
# metainit -r
# mount /dev/md/dsk/d52 /mnt #(soft partition)

Speed up metasync

admin — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 20:50:19 +0000

It’s amazing how slowly a resync happens with Solaris Volumen Manager (SVM). You can dramatically reduce your time to sync up your mirrors with SVM by adding a setting to /etc/system and rebooting.

set md_mirror:md_resync_bufsz = 1024

I’ve tried 2048 (the max) as well, but not as big a gain in speed, so I stick with 1024.

Harmless on “modern” Sun machines. Just don’t try this on your SPARC 20 or it may lock up on you. As long as you have >1GB of RAM you’ll probably be ok.

Running UNIX » svm

Mounting soft partitions from network boot?

Speed up metasync