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volplex(8) System Manager's Manual volplex(8) NAME volplex - Perform Logical Storage Manager (LSM) operations on plexes SYNOPSIS /sbin/volplex -Vf -g diskgroup -U usetype -o useopt att volume plex ... /sbin/volplex -Vf -g diskgroup -U usetype -o useopt -v volume det plex ... /sbin/volplex -Vf -g diskgroup -U usetype -o useopt -v volume dis plex ... /sbin/volplex -Vf -g diskgroup -U usetype -o useopt cp volume plex ... /sbin/volplex -Vf -g diskgroup -U usetype -o useopt snapstart volume plex /sbin/volplex -Vf -g diskgroup -U usetype -o useopt snapshot plex newvolume /sbin/volplex -Vf -g diskgroup -U usetype -o useopt -v volume mv old- plex newplex DESCRIPTION The volplex utility performs Logical Storage Manager operations on plexes and on volume-and-plex combinations. The first operand is a keyword that determines the specific operation to perform. The remain- ing operands specify the configuration objects to which the operation is to be applied. Each operation can be applied to only one disk group at a time, due to internal implementation constraints. Any volume or plex operands will be used to determine a default disk group, according to the standard disk group selection rules described in volintro(8). A specific disk group can be forced with -g diskgroup. These are the recognized operation keywords: Attach each named plex to the named volume. This can be applied to dissociated plexes, or to non-enabled plexes already associated with the named volume. If the volume is enabled, then the result of the successful operation will be to associate the plex (if needed) and to recover the plex to have the same contents as all other attached plexes in the volume. The rules for performing the attach depend upon the usage type of the named vol- ume. Attaching a plex is the normal means of recovering a plex after a disk replacement, or after a plex offline. Detach each of the named plexes. Detaching a plex leaves the plex associated with its volume, but prevents normal volume I/O from being directed to the plex. If the volume is enabled or detached, then the plex will be accessible directly, through the plex device node in /dev/plex/groupname/plex. This operation can be applied to plexes that are enabled or disabled. The rules for performing the detach depend upon the usage types of the volumes involved. The operation does not apply to dissociated plexes. Detaching a plex can be used as a simple means of backing up a volume that is normally mirrored. With this type of procedure, the detached plex (which represents a consistent image of the volume exactly at the time of the detach) is backed up using the plex device, and is then reattached when the backup operation completes. Some usage types will perform special synchroniza- tion operations to help make the detached plex consistent with respect to in-memory data, which can help improve the quality of such backups. Dissociate each of the named plexes. Dissociat- ing a plex breaks the link between the plex and its volume. A dissociated plex is inaccessible until it is reassociated, which can be done either with volplex att or with volmake. Any checks and synchronizations that apply to the det operation also apply to the dis operation. Plex dissociation is the normal means of unmirroring a volume, or reducing the mirror count for a volume. To support this use, -o rm can be used to dissociate and remove the plex (and its as- sociated subdisks) in the same operation. This makes the space used by those subdisks usable for new allocations (such as with volassist or with volmake). Plex dissociation can also be used for file system backups of volumes that are normally mirrored. Plex devices are not di- rectly mountable, so the backup method described for the det op- eration will not work if the backup program requires a mounted file system. To support such backup programs, a plex can be dissociated and can then be allocated to a new volume, such as with the command: volmake -U gen vol volume plex=plex The created volume can then be started and mounted for use by the backup program. Copy the named volume to the named plexes. The volume cannot be enabled, and the named plexes must not be associated. The results of the operation will be a set of dis- sociated plexes that are an exact copy of the volume at the time of completion of the operation. The rules for performing the attach depend upon the usage type of the named volume. To im- prove the quality of the copies, some usage types attempt to make the detached plex consistent with respect to in-memory data. This operation can be used to make a copy of a volume, for backup purposes, without mirroring the volume in advance. These two operations form the two parts of a preferred means of copy- ing a volume to a plex for backup purposes. The snapstart oper- ation attaches a plex to a volume and, when the operation is complete, leaves the plex associated as a temporary plex. After the operation completes, the administrator can convert the plex attached by snapstart into a new volume using volplex snapshot. To improve the quality of the copies, some usage types attempt to make the detached plex consistent with respect to in-memory data. This method of backup is preferable to using volplex cp because it allows the administrator to coordinate breaking off the plex from the original volume at a well-defined point in time. This is important, since attaching a plex to a volume can take a con- siderable amount of time, and it is difficult to know when it will complete. Also, direct conversion of the plex into a new volume is more convenient than requiring additional steps. At- tach the plex newplex to the volume that oldplex is associated with and dissociate oldplex. The volume cannot be disabled, and newplex must name a dissociated plex. The operation ensures seamless replacement of the dissociated plex without loss of data in the volume and without significant delays in volume ac- cessibility. A primary purpose for the plex move operation is to move a plex that is using a disk to another location. In support of this purpose for the operation, -o rm can be specified to remove the original plex after completion of the operation. For concatenated plexes, the volsd mv operation can be used to move subdisks off a disk, instead. However, moving subdisks for a striped plex off a disk requires moving the entire plex. The rules for performing the move depend upon the usage types of the volume to which oldplex is associated. OPTIONS The following options are recognized: Specify the disk group for the operation, either by disk group ID or by disk group name. By default, the disk group is chosen based on the name operands. Limit the opera- tion to apply to this usage type. Attempts to affect volumes with a different usage type will fail. Pass in usage-type-specific options to the operation. A certain set of operations are expected to be imple- mented by all usage types: Reduce the system performance impact of copy operations. Copy operations are usually a set of short copy operations on small regions of the volume (normally from 16 kilobytes to 128 kilo- bytes). This option inserts a delay between the recovery of each such region. A specific delay can be specified with iodelay as a number of milliseconds; otherwise, a default is chosen (normally 250 millisec- onds). Perform copy operations in regions with the length specified by size, which is a standard Logical Storage Manager length number (see volintro(8)). Specifying a larger number typically causes the opera- tion to complete sooner, but with greater impact on other processes us- ing the volume. The default I/O size is typically 32 kilobytes. Re- move the plexes after successful completion of a volplex dis operation. Remove the source plex after successful completion of volplex mv. Re- quire that the plex named by a plex or oldplex operand be associated with the named volume. This option can be used as a sanity check, to ensure that the specified plex is actually the plex desired for the op- eration. Write a list of utilities that would be called from volplex, along with the arguments that would be passed. The -V performs a ``mock run'' so the utilities are not actually called. -f Force an operation that the Logical Storage Manager considers potentially dangerous or of questionable use. This permits a limited set of operations that would otherwise be disallowed. Some operations may be disallowed even with this flag. FSGEN AND GEN USAGE-TYPES The fsgen and gen usage types provide similar, though not identical, semantics for all operations of the volplex utility. In particular, the fsgen usage type will attempt to flush in-memory data cached for the file system residing on the volume. For most file systems, this consists of calling sync(8) to attempt to flush all in-memory data to disk. If a volplex operation is interrupted by a signal, then an attempt is made to restore the disk group configuration to a state that is roughly equivalent to its original state. If this attempt is interrupted (such as through another signal) then the user may need to perform some cleanup. The specific cleanup actions that are needed are written to the standard error before volplex exits. The fsgen and gen usage types provide the following options as argu- ments to -o in addition to the required options: Force an operation that the Logical Storage Manager considered potentially dangerous or of questionable use. This applies to attempts to detach or dissociate the last (complete) plex in a volume, or to attempts to move a plex to a plex that has a different size. This flag is the same as -f. Ignore volume or plex read errors when copying data onto a plex. A warning message is written to standard error if a read error occurs, but the error does not affect success of the operation. This operation can be used only with the cp operation; the operation is ignored if used with other operations. Ignore plex write errors when copying data onto a plex. A warning message is written to standard error if a write error occurs, but the error does not affect success of the operation. This operation can be used only with the cp operation; the operation is ig- nored if used with other operations. mapzero If a plex is moved to a new plex that has regions that are mapped to a subdisk in the destination, but are not mapped to a subdisk for any enabled, readable plex in the volume, then zero out that mapped region in the destination plex. Without this flag, the mapped region may be left unchanged from its original contents. Limitations and extensions for the fsgen and gen usage types consist of the following: If the volume is enabled and one of the named plexes is associated with the volume, then the plex must be STALE, EMPTY, ACTIVE, or OFFLINE. If the operation suc- ceeds in attaching a plex, then any I/O fail condition for the plex is cleared. Also, attaching to an enabled volume requires that the volume have at least one enabled, read-write plex. If the volume is not enabled, then the named plexes are associ- ated with the volume (if not already associated) and are set to the STALE state, so that the plex will be fully attached by the next volume start or volume startall operation that applies to the volume. If the logging type of the volume is UNDEF and an unassociated plex with a logging subdisk is attached, the volume is automati- cally converted to have a logging type of BLKNO. Logging of volume changes is enabled when two or more attached plexes have associated log subdisks. An attempt to attach an unassociated plex fails if the putil0 field is not empty. This makes it possible to prevent use of a plex by using voledit set to set the putil0 field to a non- empty string. The putil0 field can then be cleared with either voledit set or with volmend clear putil0. A detach or dissoci- ate of a plex in an enabled volume fails if applied to a plex that is the last complete, enabled, read-write plex in the vol- ume and the volume contains two or more non-complete, enabled, read-write plexes. In other words, a volume cannot be left with two enabled, non-complete plexes. A complete plex is one that is at least as long as the volume, and has subdisks mapped to the plex for all blocks up to the length of the volume. The -f option is required to reduce a volume to containing one enabled, read-write, non-complete plex, or to having no enabled, read- write plexes at all. The det operation changes the state for an ACTIVE or CLEAN plex to STALE. The next time the volume is started, the plex will be re-attached automatically. The fsgen and gen usage types do not add any specific restrictions to the cp operation. If the des- tination plex has unmapped regions (a range of blocks in the plex with no backing subdisk) that are not mapped in the source plex, or if the destination plex is shorter than the source plex, then the -f option is required. Even with -f, the opera- tion will prevent the plex from being sparsed such that the vol- ume would be left with two or more sparse, enabled, read-write plexes, but no complete plexes. FILES The utility that performs volmend operations for a particular volume usage type. Directory containing plex devices. Plex devices for the rootdg disk group are directly under /dev/plex. Plex devices for all disk groups (including duplicate entries for rootdg) are under subdi- rectories named after the disk group. Path to a program used with the fsgen usage type for synchronizing in-memory file system data with a volume, for the file system type fstype. The program is given argu- ments of a volume name and one or more plex names. For the ufs file system types, this is a link to sync. EXIT CODES The volplex utility exits with a nonzero status if the attempted opera- tion fails. A nonzero exit code is not a complete indicator of the problems encountered but rather denotes the first condition that pre- vented further execution of the utility. See volintro(8) for a list of standard exit codes. RELATED INFORMATION Commands: sync(8), volintro(8), volassist(8), voledit(8), volmend(8), volume(8). delim off volplex(8)