Creating soft Partition on Solaris 10 with two IDEs

When defining a stripe create equal slices on both hard disks. Under Solaris SPARC you can have a
maximum to 7 slices per disk. The slice 0 holds the root, slice 1 represent the swap and slice 7 holds
the /export/home used under this system. The system has two IDE channels (t0, t1), but there is only
one IDE controller (c1).

How to create equal slices on both hard disks?

0 906 12770 13282 14087 Cylinders

SWAP Free space /export/home / 805
Cylinders
504 Cylinders

File System Start End Cylinders

0 / 13282 14087 805
1 Swap 0 906 906
2
4
5
6
7 /export/home 12770 13281 504

Capacity of cylinders = 14087

Allocated = 2215

Free = 11 872

The above table shows the default partition table which is created during installation of Solaris 10.

1. Login as root
a. # df –h
b. # format disk0
c. #format > partition
d. # partition> print
e. # partition > 3
i. New cylinder : 906
ii. Partition size : 40 GB
f. # partition > 4
i. New cylinder : 5028
ii. Partition size: 40 GB
2. You should label the other disk.
a. # format
b. # format> partition
c. # Partition >modify? yes

1
 d. # partition > name
i. tst
e. # partition > exit
f. # format > save
g. # format > quit

Mirroring Disks on Solaris 10

On this system, we have two disks to mirror. The first disk will be the primary disk and the second will be
the mirror. The disks are:

Disk 1: c1t0d0

Disk 2: c1t1d0

The partitions on the disks are presented below. Please note that each disk should be partitioned exactly
the same, otherwise the mirror would produce an error.

Disk 1:

c1t0d0s0: /

c1t0d0s1: swap

c1t0d0s2: Backup

c1t0d0s3: unassigned

c1t0d0s4: unassigned

c1t0d0s5: unassigned
Free- Space
c1t0d0s6: unassigned

c1t0d0s7: /export/home

Create the replica using the metadb command

# metadb - a – f /dev/dsk/c1t0d0s3

# metadb - a /dev/dsk/c1t0d0s4

# metadb -a -f /dev/dsk/c1t1d0s3

# metadb - a /dev/dsk/c1t1d0s4

2
 C1t0d0s0 RAID1 d1 RAID1 C1t1d0s0

d1 d12

C1t1dos0
C1t0d0s0

/root (7.81 GB) RAID1

d2 /root (7.81 GB)
RAID1

C1t0d0s1 C1t1dos1
d21 d22
Swap (8.79 GB) Swap (8.79 GB)
Soft
C1t0d0s2 /wlogic (5 GB) d43 d44 /D01 (5 GB)
Partitions
C1t1dos2
Backup (136.71 GB)
Backup (136.71 GB)
d4
C1t0d0s3 RAID1 RAID1
C1t1dos3
Unassigned (40 GB) d41 d42 Unassigned (40 GB)

/Oracle (7 C1t0d0s4 /data (10 GB) Soft

d53 C1t1d0s4
d54
GB) Unassigned (40 GB) Partitions
Unassigned (40 GB)
d5
C1t0d0s5
RAID1 RAID1 C1t1d0s5
Unassigned (0 GB) Unassigned (0 GB)
d51 d52
C1t1d0s6
C1t0d0s6
Unassigned (0 GB)
Unassigned (0 GB)
RAID1
d3 RAID1
C1t0d0s7 C1t1d0s7

/export/home (4.81 GB) d32 d31 /export/home (4.81 GB)

3
Create for the / (root) file system.

# metainit –f d11 1 1 c0t0d0so

# metainit –f d12 1 1 c0t1d0so

# metainit d1 –m d11 (here we are attaching d1 with d11)

After mirroring the root partition, we need to run the metaroot command. This command will update
the root entry in the /etc/vfstab with the new metadevice as well as add the appropriate configuration
information into the /etc/system. If you missed out to run the metaroot command before reboot, you
will not be able to boot the system.

# metaroot d1 (change from root to d1)

Create for the Swap file system.

# metainit –f d21 1 1 c0t0d0s1

# metainit –f d22 1 1 c0t1d0s1

# metainit d2 –m d21

Create SubMirrors

# metainit –f d41 1 1 c0t0d0s3

# metainit –f d42 1 1 c0t1d0s3

# metainit d4 –m d41

# metainit –f d51 1 1 c0t0d0s4

# metainit –f d52 1 1 c0t1d0s4

# metainit d5 –m d51

# metainit –f d31 1 1 c0t0d0s7

# metainit –f d32 1 1 c0t1d0s7

# metainit d3 –m d31

4
Create soft partition form d4 and d5

# metainit d43 –p d4 5g

Output: d43 soft partition is setup

# metainit d44 –p d4 5g

Output: d44 soft partition is setup

# metainit d53 –p d5 7g

Output: d53 soft partition is setup

# metainit d54 –p d5 10g

Output: d54 soft partition is setup

Create UFS File system on meta devices

# newfs /dev/md/dsk/d43

Create mount point for the four soft partition just created.

# newfs /dev/md/dsk/d44

Create mount point for the four soft partition just created.

# newfs /dev/md/dsk/d53

Create mount point for the four soft partition just created.

# newfs /dev/md/dsk/d54

Create mount point for the four soft partition just created.

Login as root

# mkdir /oracle

# mkdir /Data

# mkdir /wlogic

5
# mkdir /D01

Create Mount point for all Soft Partition

# mount –F ufs –o logging /dev/md/dsk/d43 /wlogic

# mount –F ufs –o logging /dev/md/dsk/d44 /D01

# mount –F ufs –o logging /dev/md/dsk/d53 /Oracle

# mount –F ufs –o logging /dev/md/dsk/d54 /Data

Updating /etc/vfstab

The /etc/vfstab file must be updated at this point to reflect the changes made to the system. The /
partition will have already been updated through the metaroot command run earlier, but the system
needs to know about new devices for /oracle, /wlogic, /data and /D01.

/dev/md/dsk/d43 /dev/md/rdsk/d43 /wlogic /ufs 2 yes logging

/dev/md/dsk/d44 /dev/md/rdsk/d44 /D01 /ufs 2 yes logging

/dev/md/dsk/d53 /dev/md/rdsk/d53 /Oracle /ufs 2 yes logging

/dev/md/dsk/d54 /dev/md/rdsk/d54 /Data /ufs 2 yes logging

The system can now be rebooted. When it comes back up it will be running off the new metadevices.
Use the df command to verify this. In the following section, we will attach the second half of the mirrors
and allow the two disks to synchronize.

Attaching the Mirrors

The progress of the synchronization can be monitored using the metastat command.

Issued the following command to attach the submirrors.

# metattach d1 d12

6
# metattach d2 d22

# metattach d3 d32

# metattach d4 d42

# metattach d5 d52