When you are unable to encapsulate disk for rootdg.

Hello Friends

Sometimes we get trapped in minor errors and unable to continue with the work. Although such problems come occasionally,  yet give us sleepless night.

One of the such problems is unable to encapsulate the disk for rootdg. This could be post impact of any other problem or upgrade on the system.

In this case we know that the disk was part of the rootdg; still at boot time system complains of Illegal vminor encountered OR VxVM not starting.

There are two parts in this error:

1. Illegal vminor encountered - This is due to reference existing for a non-existing dg. Remove the any reference from /etc/vx/dsk & /etc/vx/rdsk for that dg.

2.  VxVM not starting at boot time. The reason is VxVM is configured but unable to load the Volboot file. This happens when install-db file exists & OS is unable to detect the disks for rootdg. To only start the VxVM at boot time; remove the file /etc/vx/reconfig.d/state.d/install-db & /etc/vx/reconfig.d/state.d/root-done (if exists).

3. Second part is when you are unable to encapsulate the disks for rootdg. The error says VxVM  ERROR V-5-2-338 The encapsulation operation failed with the following error: 

VxVM vxencap ERROR V-5-2-610 Disk disk_1 is already being used as auto:sliced disk - in disk group -; Disk cannot be encapsulated.

Notice the hyphen (-).  This happens when for some reason veritas lost the disks control yet the reference exists in configuration file as well in disk private & public regions.

Now,The catch is how to remove the configuration so that the disk can be encapsulated.

1. Check the disk table of contents (prtvtoc) - prtvtoc /dev/rdsk/<disk>

Partition  Tag  Flags    Sector     Count    Sector  Mount Directory
       0      2    00    8395200 134954112 143349311
       1      3    01      81408   8313792   8395199
       2      5    00          0 143349312 143349311
       3     14    01      71232 143278080 143349311
       4     15    01          0     71232     71231

2. If you find the tag id 14, 15; that means the disk already configured and hence cannot be re-configured.
3. You need to clear this by running vxdiskunsetup <disk> command OR you can zeroed the partition id 4 & 5 using format utility (Solaris)
4. Once it is done, configure it back in veritas with vxencap command.
5. Vxencap -c -g rootdg rootdisk01=<disk>
6. Reboot the system.

Hope it helps.