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Saturday, February 11, 2012

Dynamically Adding a RAW device to a Solaris zone.

Dynamically Adding a RAW device to a Solaris zone.

By default it is not possible to add raw device to zone without taking a reboot on zone however there is a famous saying => "There is always a way out for those clever enough to find it". So I'm, just kidding, don't take it seriously. :)

I found a little hack to accomplish the objective of adding raw device to zone without rebooting it. Here is a way out -

1) Add the device to the zonecfg

#zonecfg -z barvozone1
zonecfg:barvozone1> add device
zonecfg:barvozone1:device> set match=/dev/rdsk/c3t60050768018A8023B8000000000000F0d0s0
zonecfg:barvozone1:device> end
zonecfg:barvozone1>exit

2) use the mknod command to create the device in the zones dev folder

#ls -l /dev/rdsk/c3t60050768018A8023B8000000000000F0d0s0
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root     root          67 Feb 18 15:34 /dev/rdsk/c3t60050768018A8023B8000000000000F0d0s0 -> ../../devices/scsi_vhci/ssd@g60050768018a8023b8000000000000f0:a,raw

#ls -l /devices/scsi_vhci/ssd@g60050768018a8023b8000000000000f0:a,raw
crw-r-----   1 root     sys      118, 128 Mar  5 23:55 /devices/scsi_vhci/ssd@g60050768018a8023b8000000000000f0:a,raw

# cd /barvozone1/zonepath/dev

# mknod c3t60050768018A8023B8000000000000F0d0s0 c 118 128

That's it. The raw device is now visible within zone and now you can start with your stuffs without any downtime. Isn't it cool?

13 comments:

  1. you saved my day :)

    additionally, files in ~zonepath/dev/rdsk are character files, and in ~zonepath/dev/dsk are block files, so the actual command works for me are something like
    # cd /barvozone1/zonepath/dev/dsk
    # mknod c3t60050768018A8023B8000000000000F0d0s0 b 118 128
    # cd /barvozone1/zonepath/dev/rdsk
    # mknod c3t60050768018A8023B8000000000000F0d0s0 c 118 128

    then i can see the disk in local zone format output, and use it :)

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  2. Glad to see that this post helped you.

    Tx/Nilesh

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  3. check "devfsadm -z -Cv" after assigning dev match to zone config

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  4. How about Soalaris 11 zones, The mknod mothod does not work any more??

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  5. On Solaris 11 ,you may need to add try as below

    On Solaris 11:
    zonecfg:rac4Zone> add device
    zonecfg:rac4Zone:device> set match=/dev/rdsk/c1t0d0s0
    zonecfg:rac4Zone:device> set allow-partition=true
    zonecfg:rac4Zone:device> set allow-raw-io=true
    zonecfg:rac4Zone:device> end

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  6. do we need to reboot after adding ASM disk in solaris 11?
    If yes is there any other way to do it without reboot of zone?

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  7. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  8. Is there a way to accomplish the same thing for Solaris 11 zones?

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  9. Note you can do ls -lL on /dev/rdsk/c3t60050768018A8023B8000000000000F0d0s0
    rather than doing two stages

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  10. HI ,

    mknod command is working for the metaset device .

    #cd /dev//rdsk
    #mknod d135 c 85 30489


    d135 is a metadevice

    can you please provide me the procedure to make raw meta device visible

    ReplyDelete