Overview of Troubleshooting the System

Prerequisites for Troubleshooting the System

To troubleshoot storage management problems related to Solaris Volume Manager, you need to do the following:

• Have root privilege

• Have a current backup of all data

General Guidelines for Troubleshooting Solaris Volume Manager

You should have the following information on hand when you troubleshoot Solaris Volume Manager problems:

• Output from the metadb command.

• Output from the metastat command.

• Output from the metastat -p command.

• Backup copy of the /etc/vfstab file.

• Backup copy of the /etc/lvm/mddb.cf file.

• Disk partition information, from the prtvtoc command (SPARC® systems) or the fdisk command (x86–based systems)

• Solaris version

• Solaris patches installed

• Solaris Volume Manager patches installed

Any time you update your Solaris Volume Manager configuration, or make other storage or operating environment-related changes to your system, generate fresh copies of this configuration information. You could also generate this information automatically with a cron job.

General Troubleshooting Approach

Although there is no one procedure that will enable you to evaluate all problems with Solaris Volume Manager, the following process provides one general approach that might help.

1. Gather information about current configuration.

2. Look at the current status indicators, including the output from the metastat and metadb commands. There should be information here that indicates which component is faulty.

3. Check the hardware for obvious points of failure. (Is everything connected properly? Was there a recent electrical outage? Have you recently added or changed equipment?)