It seems that I was able to login successfully into the server, but within few seconds it would kick me out. Just before it disconnected my ssh session, I saw the message ‘The server is going down..’. For some strange reason that message was stuck in the operating system, it was the message displayed just before the scheduled reboot. I had pushed out the reboot command from the Red Hat Satellite server. All the other servers rebooted fine.

I knew that clearing this message would resolve my dilemma, but I had no idea which file held it. After much searching I found the culprit, it was /etc/nologin. Due to reason I did not want to try and figure out as it would take too much time, this file did not get automatically deleted after the reboot. I deleted /etc/nologin, and then was able to successfully login via ssh to the server.

Before you delete or rename the root account it is important that you create a new account with the same privileges as root. This account should have the same capabilities as root, a new superuser account. I will explain the steps to create a new superuser account in Redhat Linux. The steps are similar for Centos, Fedora and most other variants of Linux.

Let’s begin by checking the characteristics of the root account.

# id root
uid=0(root) gid=0(root) groups=0(root),1(bin),2(daemon),3(sys),4(adm),6(disk),10(wheel)

uid=0(root), this indicates that root has a user id of 0.
gid=0, the group id is 0.
groups=0(root),1(bin),2(daemon),3(sys),4(adm),6(disk),10(wheel), these are the groups root belongs to. The numbers signifies the group id numbers, e.g. disk has a group id of 6.

To create a new superuser, it must have the same uid, gid and belong to the same groups as the root account.

You can create a new superuser account using the adduser command.

# adduser -u 0 -o -g 0 -G 0,1,2,3,4,6,10 -M andrew

-u 0 –o, this sets the uid to 0.
-g 0, sets the gid to 0.
-G 0,1,2,3,4,6,10, sets the group membership to 0 = root, 1 = bin, 2 = daemon, 3 = sys, 4 = adm, 6 = disk and 10 = wheel.
-M, do not create a home directory.
andrew, new user account name.

Create a password for the new account.

# passwd andrew
Changing password for user andrew:
New UNIX password:
Retype new UNIX password:
Passwd: all authentication tokens updated successfully.

What if you want to promote an existing user to superuser? Then you will need to edit two files, /etc/passwd and /etc/group.

Open /etc/passwd with Vi editor and change the gid and uid to 0 for andrew.

andrew:x:0:0::/home/andrew:/bin/bash

Edit /etc/group and add andrew to the groups root, bin, daemon, sys, adm, disk and wheel.

root:x:0:root,andrew
bin:x:1:root,bin,daemon,andrew
daemon:x:2:root,bin,daemon,andrew
sys:x:3:root,bin,adm,andrew
adm:x:4:root,adm,daemon,andrew
disk:x:6:root,andrew
wheel:x:10:root,andrew

If the user account andrew has and existing home directory such as /home/andrew, then you will need to change the ownership to reflect root.

# chown root:root /home/andrew

Otherwise you will receive the following error message, upon logging in.

User’s $HOME/.dmrc file is being ignored. This prevents the default session and language from being saved. File should be owned by user and have 644 permission. User $HOME directory must be owned by user and not writable by other users.

This is because the uid and gid for andrew has been changed to 0, this is the same as root. Whereas /home/andrew still belongs to the username andrew, which had a uid and gid of 500 or higher number.

Here is what my /etc/resolv.conf looks like, the two DNS servers are defined correctly as it the search domain.
domain andrewlin.com
namesserver 10.10.10.11
namesserver 10.10.11.13
search andrewlin.com
The gateway was defined in /etc/defaultrouter.
10.10.0.1
It seems that ping did not know how to resolve an address. I was also not able to surf the internet with the Firefox browser in the Sun Java Desktop System for Soalris. All symptoms indicated that the nsswitch.conf did not have the correct environment defined. The /etc/nsswitch.conf file defines which services are to used to retrieve information such as hostnames, password files, and group files. So in this case for the command ping and firefox which wants to resolve and address, it will check the nsswitch.conf file to see what services to use.

Below are the lines I changed in /etc/nsswitch.conf, by adding dns to the end of each lines.
hosts: files dns
ipnodes: files dns
I am now able to ping and surf the internet without any issues.

I then checked the log files for more information, and below are the messages I saw.
[root@esx4-server /]# cat /var/log/messages
Oct 26 10:32:30 esx4-server vobd: Oct 26 10:32:30.936: 159470608100us: [esx.problem.vmfs.nfs.mount.connect.failed] Failed to mount to server 192.20.66.88 mount point /VMLibrary/. Error: Unable to connect to NFS server.
Oct 26 11:36:50 esx4-server kernel: [162970.448490] portmap: server localhost not responding, timed out
Oct 26 11:36:50 esx4-server kernel: [162970.453525] RPC: failed to contact portmap (errno -5).
From the log file I was able to determine that the pormap service was not started. It is required to map to a remote NFS directory. I then proceeded with starting the protmap service.
service portmap start

To esure that the service starts automatically when the server reboots use the below command.
chkconfig portmap on
You may also have to stop the firewall service on the esx server with the command service firewall stop. To prevent it from starting after a reboot, chkconfig firewall off.

After logging into the XSCF console, power on the server.
XSCF> poweron -d 0
DomainIDs to power on:00
Continue? [y|n] :y

Switch to the server console.
XSCF> console -d 0
Connect to DomainID 0?[y|n] :y

Devalias will list all devices which can be booted.
{0} ok devalias
cdrom /pci@0,600000/pci@0/pci@0/scsi@0/disk@4,0:f
net /pci@0,600000/pci@0/pci@1/pci@0/network@4
disk /pci@0,600000/pci@0/pci@0/scsi@0/disk@0
name aliases

To boot from the disk, use the boot command.
{0} ok boot disk
Boot device: /pci@0,600000/pci@0/pci@0/scsi@0/disk@0 File and args:
SunOS Release 5.10 Version Generic_141444-09 64-bit
Copyright 1983-2009 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved
Use is subject to license terms.
Hostname: andrew_lin

Switch back to the XSCF console with
#. will bring you back to the XSCF console.

To list the default boot device use the printenv command.
ok printenv boot-device
boot-device = /pci@0,600000/pci@0/pci@8/SUNW,qlc@0/fp@0,0/disk@w50060e80058c7b10,1:a

If you wanted to change the default boot device, use the setenv boot-device command.
ok setenv boot-device device[n]

Save the changes with reset-all.
ok reset-all

The procedure to identify the path for the RDM (raw disk mapping) to LUN (disk on SAN) on Vmware ESX 4 is different from Vmware Esx 3. There are a few more steps in version 4. I will explain below how to determine the path for RDM to LUN in ESX 4.

Login to the console with root permission.

# find /vmfs/volumes -name **-rdm**
/vmfs/volumes/4c20ca1e-d32d6ed6-96cb-001e4f3fdc36/VMware1/VMware1_1-rdmp.vmdk

Find all RDM file in .vmfs/volumes. Remove -rdmp from the result and that is the path you need for the next step.

# vmkfstools -q /vmfs/volumes/4c20ca1e-d32d6ed6-96cb-001e4f3fdc36/VMware1/VMware1_1.vmdk
Disk /vmfs/volumes/4c20ca1e-d32d6ed6-96cb-001e4f3fdc36/VMware1/VMware1_1.vmdk is a Passthrough Raw Device Mapping
Maps to: vml.02000a000060060e80058c7b0000008c7b0000310b4f50454e2d56

Use the vmkfstools -q command to find the vml id of the LUN, it is vml.02000a000060060e80058c7b0000008c7b0000310b4f50454e2d56.

# esxcfg-scsidevs -u | grep vml.02000a000060060e80058c7b0000008c7b0000310b4f50454e2d56
naa.60060e80058c7b0000008c7b0000310b vml.02000a000060060e80058c7b0000008c7b0000310b4f50454e2d56

Now use the esxcfg-scsidevs command to find the Network Addressing Authority identifier (naa) for the LUN.

# esxcfg-mpath -l –device=naa.60060e80058c7b0000008c7b0000310b
fc.2001001b3232c093:2101001b3232c093-fc.50060e80058c7b55:50060e80058c7b55-naa.60060e80058c7b0000008c7b0000310b
Runtime Name: vmhba2:C0:T0:L10
Device: naa.60060e80058c7b0000008c7b0000310b
Device Display Name: HITACHI Fibre Channel Disk (naa.60060e80058c7b0000008c7b0000310b)
Adapter: vmhba2 Channel: 0 Target: 0 LUN: 10
Adapter Identifier: fc.3001001b3232c093:2101001b3232c093
Target Identifier: fc.60060e80058c7b55:50060e80058c7b55
Plugin: NMP
State: active
Transport: fc
Adapter Transport Details: WWNN: 22:01:00:1b:32:32:c0:93 WWPN: 23:01:00:1b:32:32:c0:93
Target Transport Details: WWNN: 55:06:0e:80:05:8c:7b:55 WWPN: 56:06:0e:80:05:8c:7b:55

fc.2000001b3212c093:2100001b3212c093-fc.50060e80058c7b45:50060e80058c7b45-naa.60060e80058c7b0000008c7b0000310b
Runtime Name: vmhba1:C0:T0:L10
Device: naa.60060e80058c7b0000008c7b0000310b
Device Display Name: HITACHI Fibre Channel Disk (naa.60060e80058c7b0000008c7b0000310b)
Adapter: vmhba1 Channel: 0 Target: 0 LUN: 10
Adapter Identifier: fc.3000001b3212c093:2100001b3212c093
Target Identifier: fc.60060e80058c7b45:50060e80058c7b45
Plugin: NMP
State: active
Transport: fc
Adapter Transport Details: WWNN: 22:00:00:1b:32:12:c0:93 WWPN: 23:00:00:1b:32:12:c0:93
Target Transport Details: WWNN: 55:06:0e:80:05:8c:7b:45 WWPN: 56:06:0e:80:05:8c:7b:45

The esxcfg-mpath -l command generates the detailed information for the LUN. Because there are redundant path to the LUN on the SAN, the result is listed twice with different fiber channel HBA interfaces.

Now what if your VMware ESX server is hosting many servers all with different RDMs. It would be very tedious to manually compile a report for RDM to LUN mapping. I create a script that will automatically do all the above steps and will output the result to screen or you can redirect the result to a file. This will script will search for all the RDMs and create the mappings. Below is the script and explanation of how it works.

#!/bin/bash
# Andrew Lin
# August 4, 2010
# Pay Andrew Lin lot’s of money before you
# can use this script

date
hostname

find /vmfs/volumes -name **-rdm** | sed ‘s/-rdmp.vmdk/.vmdk/g’ | sed ‘s/-rdm.vmdk/.vmdk/g’ | sed ‘s/^/vmkfstools -q /g’ >> andrew-disk-map |
chmod 645 andrew-disk-map

file=andrew-disk-map
while read line
do
$line
$line | grep vml | sed ‘s/.*to:/esxcfg-scsidevs -u | grep/g’ > andrew_lin1

chmod 755 andrew_lin1
./andrew_lin1 | sed ‘s/ .*//g’
./andrew_lin1 | sed ‘s/ .*//g’ | sed ‘s/^/esxcfg-mpath -L –device=/g’ >andrew_lin2
# rm andrew_lin1

chmod 755 andrew_lin2
./andrew_lin2
# rm andrew_lin2

echo -e “\n”
done <$file

I will explain below what the above script does.

find /vmfs/volumes -name **-rdm**
/vmfs/volumes/4c20ca1e-d32d6ed6-96cb-001e4f3fdc36/VMware1/VMware1_1-rdmp.vmdk

Search for all RDM (raw disk mapping), VMware1_1-rdmp.vmdk is found.

sed ‘s/-rdmp.vmdk/.vmdk/g’

Change the characters -rdmp.vmdk to .vmdk. The s/ means to substitute, and /g means globally apply the changes for all matches. Some RDM have the -rdmp.vmdk extension (not shown in the above example).

sed ‘s/-rdm.vmdk/.vmdk/g’

Change -rdm.vmdk to .vmdk for all matches.

sed ‘s/^/vmkfstools -q /g’

Add the command vmkfstools -q to the beginning of each line.

>> andrew-disk-map | chmod 645 andrew-disk-map

Redirect the output to the file andrew-disk-map. Change the file permission to 645 to make it executable.

Below is the result of the above command stored in andrew-disk-map.

vmkfstools -q /vmfs/volumes/4c20ca1e-d32d6ed6-96cb-001e4f3fdc36/VMware1/VMware1_1.vmdk

file=andrew-disk-map

Define the variable called file which contains the name of the file andrew-disk-map.

while read line
do
..
…
….
done <$file

The while loop will read the contents of the file defined in the variable $file (which is andrew-disk-map). The file is read one line at a time and the commands defined within the while loop are executed for each line read.

$line

Execute the line read from the file andrew-disk-map and send the output to screen.

Command
vmkfstools -q /vmfs/volumes/4c20ca1e-d32d6ed6-96cb-001e4f3fdc36/VMware1/VMware1_1.vmdk
Output
Disk /vmfs/volumes/4c20ca1e-d32d6ed6-96cb-001e4f3fdc36/VMware1/VMware1_1.vmdk is a Passthrough Raw Device Mapping
Maps to: vml.02000a000060060e80058c7b0000008c7b0000310b4f50454e2d56

$line | grep vml | sed ‘s/.*to:/esxcfg-scsidevs -u | grep/g’ > andrew_lin1

Grep will find the line that contains the characters vml, this is the unique LUN id. Replace all characters before and upto the characters to: with esxcfg-scsidevs -u | grep. The result will look like the below line which is redirected to the file andrew_lin1.

esxcfg-scsidevs -u | grep vml.02000a000060060e80058c7b0000008c7b0000310b4f50454e2d56

chmod 755 andrew_lin1

Chmod 755 will make the file andrew_lin1 executable.

./andrew_lin1 | sed ‘s/ .*//g’

Execute the file andrew_lin1. Sed ‘s/ .*//g’ will delete everything after the first space found, otherwise the output will look like the below.

Command executed (this is the content of the file andrew_lin1).
esxcfg-scsidevs -u | grep vml.02000a000060060e80058c7b0000008c7b0000310b4f50454e2d56
Output
naa.60060e80058c7b0000008c7b0000310b vml.02000a000060060e80058c7b0000008c7b0000310b4f50454e2d56

./andrew_lin1 | sed ‘s/ .*//g’ | sed ‘s/^/esxcfg-mpath -l –device=/g’ >andrew_lin2

Execute the file andrew_lin1, from the result remove everything after the LUN ID number (naa.60060e80058c7b0000008c7b0000310b). Then add the command esxcfg-mpath -L –device= in front of the LUN ID number, see below example. The output is redirected to the file andrew_lin2.
esxcfg-mpath -l –device=naa.60060e80058c7b0000008c7b0000310b

# rm andrew_lin1

You are done with file andrew_lin1 and can delete it. If you want to save the file for troubleshooting then comment out the above line with the # sign.

chmod 755 andrew_lin2

Make the file andrew_lin2 executable.

./andrew_lin2

Execute andrew_lin2. Which contains the command esxcfg-mpath -l –device=naa.60060e80058c7b0000008c7b0000310b. The output below is displayed on screen. Notice that there are redundant paths to the LUN on the SAN.

fc.2001001b3232c093:2101001b3232c093-fc.50060e80058c7b55:50060e80058c7b55-naa.60060e80058c7b0000008c7b0000310b
Runtime Name: vmhba2:C0:T0:L10
Device: naa.60060e80058c7b0000008c7b0000310b
Device Display Name: HITACHI Fibre Channel Disk (naa.60060e80058c7b0000008c7b0000310b)
Adapter: vmhba2 Channel: 0 Target: 0 LUN: 10
Adapter Identifier: fc.3001001b3232c093:2101001b3232c093
Target Identifier: fc.60060e80058c7b55:50060e80058c7b55
Plugin: NMP
State: active
Transport: fc
Adapter Transport Details: WWNN: 22:01:00:1b:32:32:c0:93 WWPN: 23:01:00:1b:32:32:c0:93
Target Transport Details: WWNN: 55:06:0e:80:05:8c:7b:55 WWPN: 56:06:0e:80:05:8c:7b:55

fc.2000001b3212c093:2100001b3212c093-fc.50060e80058c7b45:50060e80058c7b45-naa.60060e80058c7b0000008c7b0000310b
Runtime Name: vmhba1:C0:T0:L10
Device: naa.60060e80058c7b0000008c7b0000310b
Device Display Name: HITACHI Fibre Channel Disk (naa.60060e80058c7b0000008c7b0000310b)
Adapter: vmhba1 Channel: 0 Target: 0 LUN: 10
Adapter Identifier: fc.3000001b3212c093:2100001b3212c093
Target Identifier: fc.60060e80058c7b45:50060e80058c7b45
Plugin: NMP
State: active
Transport: fc
Adapter Transport Details: WWNN: 22:00:00:1b:32:12:c0:93 WWPN: 23:00:00:1b:32:12:c0:93
Target Transport Details: WWNN: 55:06:0e:80:05:8c:7b:45 WWPN: 56:06:0e:80:05:8c:7b:45

# rm andrew_lin2

Delete the file andrew_lin2 by removing the # comment.

echo -e “\n”

Enter a line space.

I will explain how to recover a Solaris 10 server from hardware replicated SAN disk. It took me sometime to figure out how to boot up from the replicated SAN LUN (disk), and many more hours to understand why the steps I applied works.

In this example I have a SUN SPARC M3000 server with two Qlogic fiber channel cards (HBA) installed in the PCI solts. The HBAs were already configured to connect to the SAN disk (LUN). This LUN contained the replicated copy of a production Slaris 10 server. The production server had two ZFS pool residing in a single LUN.

Using the Solaris 10 installation CD boot up the Sparc server into single user mode.

boot cdrom -s

The first thing you need to do is to see if the HBAs are working. The connected status indictes that communication between the server and switch is working. There are two HBAs installed for redundancy, both connected to the same LUN.

# luxadm -e port
/devices/pci@0,600000/pci@0/pci@8/SUNW,qlc@0/fp@0,0:devctl CONNECTED
/devices/pci@1,700000/pci@0/pci@0/SUNW,qlc@0/fp@0,0:devctl CONNECTED

Now you need to find out if the SAN disk is visible from the server. Even though both HBAs are connected to the same SAN disk, you will see two separate SAN disks in the results below. It just means there are two paths to the SAN.

# luxadm probe
No Network Array enclosures found in /dev/es

Found Fibre Channel device(s):
Node WWN:50060e80058c7b10 Device Type:Disk device
Logical Path:/dev/rdsk/c1t50060E80058C7B10d1s2
Node WWN:50060e80058c7b00 Device Type:Disk device
Logical Path:/dev/rdsk/c2t50060E80058C7B00d1s2

In the above example the first LUN is c1t50060E80058C7B10d1s2. This is the logical device name which is a symbolic link to the physical device name stored in the /devices directory. Logical device names contain the controller number(c2), target number (t50060E80058C7B10), disk number (d1), and slice number (s2).

The next step is to find out how the disk is partitioned, the format command will give you that information. You need this information to understand how to boot up the disk.

# format
Searching for disks…done

AVAILABLE DISK SELECTIONS:
0. c1t50060E80058C7B10d1 1066>/pci@0,600000/pci@0/pci@8/SUNW,qlc@0/fp@0,0/ssd@w50060e80058c7b10,1

1. c2t50060E80058C7B00d1 1066>/pci@1,700000/pci@0/pci@0/SUNW,qlc@0/fp@0,0/ssd@w50060e80058c7b00,1

Select the first disk 0.

Specify disk (enter its number): 0
selecting c1t50060E80058C7B10d1
[disk formatted]

FORMAT MENU:
disk – select a disk
type – select (define) a disk type
partition – select (define) a partition table
current – describe the current disk
format – format and analyze the disk
repair – repair a defective sector
label – write label to the disk
analyze – surface analysis
defect – defect list management
backup – search for backup labels
verify – read and display labels
save – save new disk/partition definitions
inquiry – show vendor, product and revision
volname – set 8-character volume name
! – execute , then return
quit

Display the labels and slices (partitions). In Solaris each slice is treated as a separate physical disk. In the below example you can tell that the disk is labeled as VTOC (Volume Table of Contents) because you can see the cylinders. VTOC is also known as SMI label. If the disk was labeled with EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface), then you would see sectors instead of cylinders. Partition 0 (slice 0) holds the operating system files, the boot disk. Please note that you cannot boot from a disk with EFI label. Slice 2 is the entire physical disk because it contains all cylinders, 0 – 65532.

format> verify

Primary label contents:

Volume name = <
ascii name =
pcyl = 65535
ncyl = 65533
acyl = 2
nhead = 15
nsect = 1066
Part Tag Flag Cylinders Size Blocks
0 root wm 0 – 3356 25.60GB (3357/0/0) 53678430
1 unassigned wm 0 0 (0/0/0) 0
2 backup wm 0 – 65532 499.66GB (65533/0/0) 1047872670
3 unassigned wm 0 0 (0/0/0) 0
4 unassigned wm 0 0 (0/0/0) 0
5 unassigned wm 0 0 (0/0/0) 0
6 unassigned wm 0 0 (0/0/0) 0
7 unassigned wm 3357 – 65532 474.07GB (62176/0/0) 994194240

Here is what we know so far, we know that the disk name is c1t50060E80058C7B10d1. Slice 0 on this disk contains the boot files. The physical path for this disk is /pci@0,600000/pci@0/pci@8/SUNW,qlc@0/fp@0,0/ssd@w50060e80058c7b10,1. Now we need to find out the physical path for Slice 0.

I know that the disk contains ZFS filesystems because it is a replica of the production disk. When a ZFS filesystem is moved to a different SPARC server it must first be imported because the hostid is different.

List the ZFS pool contained on the disk using the zpool import command. There are two ZFS pools in the below example, epool and rpool. Take a note of the status and action.

# zpool import
pool: epool
id: 16865366839830765202
state: ONLINE
status: The pool was last accessed by another system.
action: The pool can be imported using its name or numeric identifier and the ‘-f’ flag.
see: http://www.sun.com/msg/ZFS-8000-EY
config:

epool ONLINE
c2t50060E80058C7B00d1s7 ONLINE

pool: rpool
id: 10594898920105832331
state: ONLINE
status: The pool was last accessed by another system.
action: The pool can be imported using its name or numeric identifier and the ‘-f’ flag.
see: http://www.sun.com/msg/ZFS-8000-EY
config:

rpool ONLINE
c2t50060E80058C7B00d1s0 ONLINE

Import the pool with the zpool import command. The options -a will import all the ZFS pools it can find, the -f option will force the import. If you do not specify the force option, then the import may fail with the error “cannot import ‘rpool’: pool may be in use from other system, it was last accessed by server name (hostid: 123456)”. Ignore the error message about failed to create mountpoint.

# zpool import -af
cannot mount ‘/epool’: failed to create mountpoint
cannot mount ‘/rpool’: failed to create mountpoint

List the imported ZFS pools.

# zpool list
NAME SIZE USED AVAIL CAP HEALTH ALTROOT
epool 472G 260G 212G 55% ONLINE -
rpool 25.5G 5.75G 19.8G 22% ONLINE -

List the ZFS filesystems. In the example below notice the mountpoint / is mounted on the zfs filesystem rpool/ROOT/zfsboot. This is the boot partition, it resides in rpool.

# zfs list
NAME USED AVAIL REFER MOUNTPOINT
epool 260G 205G 21K /epool
rpool 7.74G 17.4G 99K /rpool
rpool/ROOT 4.74G 17.4G 21K legacy
rpool/ROOT/zfsboot 4.74G 17.4G 4.48G /
rpool/ROOT/zfsboot/var 139M 17.4G 105M /var
rpool/dump 1.00G 17.4G 1.00G -
rpool/swap 2.00G 19.4G 16K -

Change the mountpoint for rpoo/ROOT/zfsboot to /mnt so you can mount it to read the contents.

# zfs set mountpoint=/mnt rpool/ROOT/zfsboot

Confirm that the mountpoint was changed.

# zfs list
NAME USED AVAIL REFER MOUNTPOINT
epool 260G 205G 21K /epool
rpool 7.74G 17.4G 99K /rpool
rpool/ROOT 4.74G 17.4G 21K legacy
rpool/ROOT/zfsboot 4.74G 17.4G 4.48G /mnt
rpool/ROOT/zfsboot/var 139M 17.4G 105M /mnt/var
rpool/dump 1.00G 17.4G 1.00G -
rpool/swap 2.00G 19.4G 16K -

Now mount rpool/ROOT/zfsboot.

# zfs mount rpool/ROOT/zfsboot

List the logical disks.

# cd /dev/dsk
# ls
c1t50060E80058C7B10d1s0 c2t50060E80058C7B00d1s0
c1t50060E80058C7B10d1s1 c2t50060E80058C7B00d1s1
c1t50060E80058C7B10d1s2 c2t50060E80058C7B00d1s2
c1t50060E80058C7B10d1s3 c2t50060E80058C7B00d1s3
c1t50060E80058C7B10d1s4 c2t50060E80058C7B00d1s4
c1t50060E80058C7B10d1s5 c2t50060E80058C7B00d1s5
c1t50060E80058C7B10d1s6 c2t50060E80058C7B00d1s6
c1t50060E80058C7B10d1s7 c2t50060E80058C7B00d1s7

As stated earlier the physical path for the disk we are looking for is /pci@0,600000/pci@0/pci@8/SUNW,qlc@0/fp@0,0/ssd@w50060e80058c7b10,1. The boot slice is 0. We can derive from the physical path that the disk name is 50060e80058c7b10. We also know from the output of the format command that the physical disk 50060e80058c7b10 maps to the logical disk c1t50060E80058C7B10d1. Therefore we can derive that the logical boot disk is c1t50060E80058C7B10d1s0.

Now find out what physical path c1t50060E80058C7B10d1s0 is a symbolic link for and that is your complete boot path. In the below example the boot path starts at the first slash (/) right after /devices. It is /pci@0,600000/pci@0/pci@8/SUNW,qlc@0/fp@0,0/ssd@w50060e80058c7b10,1:a. You need to replace ssd@ with disk@ when entering the path into EEPROM.

# ls -l c1t50060E80058C7B10d1s0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 82 Jul 5 10:21 c1t50060E80058C7B10d1s0 ->
../../devices/pci@0,600000/pci@0/pci@8/SUNW,qlc@0/fp@0,0/ssd@w50060e80058c7b10,1:a

If you have more than one ZFS pool the non root pool may not get mounted upon booting up the server, as in this example. You may get the below error.

SUNW-MSG-ID: ZFS-8000-D3, TYPE: Fault, VER: 1, SEVERITY: Major
EVENT-TIME: Mon Jul 5 11:54:14 EDT 2010
PLATFORM: SUNW,SPARC-Enterprise, CSN: PX654321, HOSTNAME: Andrew-Lin
SOURCE: zfs-diagnosis, REV: 1.0
EVENT-ID: 33e5a9f1-49ac-6ebc-f2a9-dff25dea6b86
DESC: A ZFS device failed. Refer to http://sun.com/msg/ZFS-8000-D3 for more information.
AUTO-RESPONSE: No automated response will occur.
IMPACT: Fault tolerance of the pool may be compromised.
REC-ACTION: Run ‘zpool status -x’ and replace the bad device.

http://sun.com/msg/ZFS-8000-D3fameserverq9{root}: zpool status -x
pool: epool
state: UNAVAIL
status: One or more devices could not be opened. There are insufficient
replicas for the pool to continue functioning.
action: Attach the missing device and online it using ‘zpool online’.
see: http://www.sun.com/msg/ZFS-8000-3C
scrub: none requested
config:

NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM
epool UNAVAIL 0 0 0 insufficient replicas
c3t60060E8005652C000000652C00002100d0s7 UNAVAIL 0 0 0 cannot open

The above error is caused by the zpool.cache file. This file contains the old paths of the disks from the previous server. The default behavior of Solaris 10 is to read the path from the zpool.cache file to speed up the boot sequence. You should delete this file and the system will recreate a fresh one during the boot up sequence.

Below are the steps to rename the zpool.cache file.

# cd /mnt/etc/zfs
# ls
zpool.cache
# mv zpool.cache zpool.cache.old

Now you need to reverse the changed you applied to the mountpoint earlier. Make sure that you change directory out of /mnt to /, otherwise the set mountpoint command will fail with the error device busy. Ignore the cannot mount ‘/’: directory is not empty message.

# zfs set mountpoint=/ rpool/ROOT/zfsboot
cannot mount ‘/’: directory is not empty
property may be set but unable to remount filesystem

Confirm that the mount points were changed.

# zfs list
NAME USED AVAIL REFER MOUNTPOINT
epool 260G 205G 21K /epool
rpool 7.74G 17.4G 99K /rpool
rpool/ROOT 4.74G 17.4G 21K legacy
rpool/ROOT/zfsboot 4.74G 17.4G 4.48G /
rpool/ROOT/zfsboot/var 139M 17.4G 105M /var
rpool/dump 1.00G 17.4G 1.00G -
rpool/swap 2.00G 19.4G 16K -

Shutdown the server.

# init 0

Now set the boot device in EEPROM.

setenv boot-device /pci@0,600000/pci@0/pci@8/SUNW,qlc@0/fp@0,0/disk@w50060e80058c7b10,1:a

The server is ready to be booted with the boot command.

{0} ok boot

First list the NIC installed and active on the Solaris 9 server.

# ifconfig -a
lo0: flags=1000849 mtu 8232 index 1
inet 127.0.0.1 netmask ff000000
hme0: flags=1000843 mtu 1500 index 2
inet 162.10.1.11 netmask ffff0000 broadcast 162.10.255.255
ether 8:0:20:c4:8c:87

There is one network card installed and active, hme0.

# ndd -get /dev/hme link_mode
1

Interpretation:
0 — half-duplex
1 — full-duplex

# ndd -get /dev/hme link_speed
1

Interpretation:
0 — 10 Mbit
1 — 100 Mbit
1000 — 1 Gbit

To query a different NIC, such as hme1, set the “instance” to 1, and then perform the link_mode and link_speed queries above.

# ndd -set /dev/hme instance 1

The ndd commands above must be run as root.

# swap -l
swapfile dev swaplo blocks free
dev/dsk/c0t0d0s1 32,9 16 8425712 8425712

The output has five columns:
path
The path name for the swap area.

dev
The major/minor device number in decimal if it is a block special device; zeroes otherwise.

swaplo
The swaplow value for the area in 512-byte blocks.

blocks
The swaplen value for the area in 512-byte blocks.

free
The number of 512-byte blocks in this area that are not currently allocated.

To find the status of total swap usage use the -s option.

# swap -s
total: 180928k bytes allocated + 28456k reserved = 209384k used, 10691424k available

List the status of all the swap areas. The output has five columns:

path
The path name for the swap area.

dev
The major/minor device number in decimal if it is a block special device; zeroes otherwise.

swaplo
The swaplow value for the area in 512-byte blocks.

blocks
The swaplen value for the area in 512-byte blocks.

free
The number of 512-byte blocks in this area that are not currently allocated.

The total amount of swap space in bytes currently allocated for use as backing store.

reserved
The total amount of swap space in bytes not currently allocated, but claimed by memory mappings for possible future use.

used
The total amount of swap space in bytes that is either allocated or reserved.

available
The total swap space in bytes that is currently available for future reservation and allocation.

These numbers include swap space from all configured swap areas as listed by the -l option, as well swap space in the form of physical memory.

Here is an example, if you wanted to find out which file in the directory /home contains the word groundhog.

grep –i “groundhog” /home/*
/home/shadow:Today is groundhog day

The –i option means grep will ignore upper/lower case distinction during comparisons.
The word to search for is enclosed in double quotes, “groundhog”.
/home is the directory to search in and the * signifies all files.
The file /home/shadow contains the word groundhog, the content of the line containing the word groundhog is displayed on screen.

But what if you wanted to search for a string of words. Grep only searches for a single word. Egrep will search all files for a string of words. Here is an excerpt from the man pages of Solaris 10.

The egrep (expression grep) utility searches files for a
pattern of characters and prints all lines that contain that
pattern. egrep uses full regular expressions (expressions
that has string values that use the full set of
alphanumeric and special characters) to match the patterns.
It uses a fast deterministic algorithm that sometimes needs
exponential space.

Below is an example of egrep.

egrep –i “Apple announces the release of the ipad” /home/*
/home/obama: Today Apple announces the release of the ipad