Possible reasons for a boot failure: =================================== =================================== 1.The boot device cannot be opened. 2.

The system cannot be be booted from unusable or stale plexes. 3.A UNIX partition is invalid. 4.There are incorrect entries in /etc/vfstab. 5.Configuration files are missing or damaged i) Boot device Cannot be opened ================================= Symptom: SCSI device 0,0 is not responding Can t open boot device Possible Reasons: The following are Common Causes for the system PROM being unable to read the boo t program from the boot drive: The boot disk is not powered on The SCSI bus is not terminated There is a Controller failure on some port A disk is failing and locking the bus , preventing any disks from identi fying themselves to the controller, and making the controller assume that there are no disks attached Actions : Check carefully that everything on the SCSI bus is in order, check if an y disks are powered off or the bus is unterminated. If any disks failed , then r emove them from the bus If no h/w problems, the errors due to data errors on boot disk, just try to boot from alternative boot disk.

ii) Cannot boot from unusable or stale Plexes ============================================== Possible Reasons: If the h the original that reside on original boot ale plex. system was booted from one of the disks made bootable by VXVM wit boot disk turned off. The systems boots normally, but the plexes the unpowered disks are stale. If the sytem reboots from the disk with the disk turned back on, the system boots using that st

If errors in the VxVM headers on the boot disk prevent VxVM from properl y identifying the disk. In this case, VxVM does not know the name of that disk. This is a problem because Plexes are associated with disk names, so a ny Plexes on the unidentified disk are unusable.

If the root disk has a failure that affects the root volume Plex. At the next boot attempt, the system still expects to use the failed root Plex for boo ting. If the root disk mirrored at the time of the failure, an alte rnate root disk can be specified for booting. In any of the above situation, vxconfigd display a message describing th e error and the recovery advice, then halts the system. Sample errors: VxVM vxconfigd ERROR V-5-1-1049: System boot disk does not have a valid root plex Please boot from one of the following disks: Disk: disk01 Device: c0t1d0s2 vxvm:vxconfigd: Error: System startup failed The system is down. Above error informs to boot from alternate disk disk01. Once you boot fr om the alternate disk, if the Plexes on the original boot disk were simply stale , they are caught up automatically as the system comes up. If, on the other ha nd, there was a problem with the private area on the disk or the disk failed, yo u need to re-add or replace the disk. disk we can identify the problem, if the failure In the private area of root by running # vxdisk list DEVICE GROUP STATUS bootdg c0t1d0s2 bootdg sliced ONLINE TYPE DISK failed was: c0t3d0s2 disk01 rootdisk

iii) Invalid Unix Partition ============================ Error appears like File just loaded does not appear to be executable

If this message appears during the boot attempt, the system should be bo oted from an alternate boot disk. While booting, most disk drivers display error s on the console about the invalid UNIX partition information on the failin g disk. The messages are similar to this: WARNING: unable to read label WARNING: corrupt label_sdo To resolve the issue either you need to e a failed boot disk re-add the failed disk or replac

iv) Incorrect entries in /etc/vfstab ====================================== Damaged root (/) entry in /etc/vfstab If the entry in /etc/vfstab for the root (/) file system is lost or is i ncorrect, the system boots in single-user mode. Messages similar to the followin g are displayed on booting the system: INIT: Cannot create /var/adm/utmp or /var/adm/utmpx INIT: failed write of utmpx entry: Resolution: # fsck # mount F ufs /dev/rdsk/c0t0d0s0 o remount /dev/vx/dsk/rootvol /

After mounting the / as RW just exit the shell, and then the system prom pts for the run level. Enter into Run level 3 and restore the /etc/vfstab for / after the system boots. Damaged /usr entry in /etc/vfstab The /etc/vfstab file has an entry for /usr only if /usr is located on se parate disk partition. After encapsulation of the disk containing the /usr parti tion, VxVM changes the entry in /etc/vfstab to use the correspon ding volume. # # t Edit the /a/etc/vfstab to fix the /usr entry /dev/vx/dsk/usr yes /dev/vx/rdsk/usr /usr ufs 1 ok boot cdrom s Boot to Single user mode using CDROM

mount /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s0 /a mount root (/) file system on /a or /mn

Shutdown and reboot the machine from the same root partition on which /u sr was restored v) Missing or damaged configuration files ========================================= If /etc/system is damaged or missing, and a saved copy of this file is not available on the root disk, the system cannot be booted with the VxVM rootability feature turned on. Below steps allow you to boot the system without VxVM rootability and r estore configuration file a. ok> boot cdrom s b. # mount /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s0 /a If backup copy of /etc/system avialble, then restore this as a file /a/e tc/system. If no backup then create new /a/etc/system file with the following en tries that are require by VxVM:

set vxio:vol_rootdev_is_volume=1 forceload: drv/ < driver > forceload: drv/vxio forceload: drv/vxspec forceload: drv/vxdmp rootdev:/pseudo/vxio@0:0 To find the driver name in the entry # ls al /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s2 lrwxrwxrwx ,isptwo@4/sd@0,0:c /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s2 -> ../../devices/pci@1f,0/pci@1/pci@1/SUNW pci and sd drivers. And t forceload: drv/ < driver > just run

above output indicates that the root disk required he entries in /etc/system should look like forceload: drv/pci forceload: drv/sd

Shutdown and reboot the machine with same root partition where the conf iguration files restored.