Veritas™ Volume Manager Administrator's Guide

Handling errors when importing disks

When you move disks from a system that has crashed or that failed to detect the group before the disk was moved, the locks stored on the disks remain and must be cleared. The system returns the following error message:

VxVM vxdg ERROR V-5-1-587 disk group groupname: import failed: 
Disk is in use by another host

The next message indicates that the disk group does not contains any valid disks (not that it does not contains any disks):

VxVM vxdg ERROR V-5-1-587 Disk group groupname: import failed:
No valid disk found containing disk group

The disks may be considered invalid due to a mismatch between the host ID in their configuration copies and that stored in the /etc/vx/volboot file.

To clear locks on a specific set of devices, use the following command:

# vxdisk clearimport devicename ...

To clear the locks during import, use the following command:

# vxdg -C import diskgroup

A disk group can be imported successfully if all the disks are accessible that were visible when the disk group was last imported successfully. However, sometimes you may need to specify the -f option to forcibly import a disk group if some disks are not available. If the import operation fails, an error message is displayed.

The following error message indicates a fatal error that requires hardware repair or the creation of a new disk group, and recovery of the disk group configuration and data:

VxVM vxdg ERROR V-5-1-587 Disk group groupname: import failed:
Disk group has no valid configuration copies

The following error message indicates a recoverable error.

VxVM vxdg ERROR V-5-1-587 Disk group groupname: import failed:
Disk for disk group not found

If some of the disks in the disk group have failed, you can force the disk group to be imported by specifying the -f option to the vxdg import command:

# vxdg -f import diskgroup

As using the -f option to force the import of an incomplete disk group counts as a successful import, an incomplete disk group may be imported subsequently without this option being specified. This may not be what you expect.

You can also import the disk group as a shared disk group.

See Importing disk groups as shared.

These operations can also be performed using the vxdiskadm utility. To deport a disk group using vxdiskadm, select Remove access to (deport) a disk group from the main menu. To import a disk group, select Enable access to (import) a disk group. The vxdiskadm import operation checks for host import locks and prompts to see if you want to clear any that are found. It also starts volumes in the disk group.