Category Archives: Tutorial

Change EMC Powerpath Failover Policy on UNIX Systems

As UNIX system administrators  – we need our Operating Systems running in optimal state every time. The same is what we want to our storage systems. In EMC Powerpath there are a couple of failover policies that we can enforce to our storage devices but we must always use the one that is best suitable. We have here a LUN that is currently under Basic Failover policy even though the storage is CLARiiON:

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Fix Garbled Solaris Console

If ever you encounter a console with output such as below, it can be easily be remedied by fixing the /etc/ttydefs file.

ttymon: unable to find <console> in "/etc/ttydefs"
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
ü ×AÒNÉNG                                                                    ü
ü Ôèe ðroçráíó áîä äátá ótoreä oî tèió óùóteí áre liceîóeä to¬ or áre        ü
ü ðriöáte ðroðertù of¬ ÔÅÌUS áîä áre láwfõllù áöáiláâle oîlù to áõtèoriúeä   ü
ü õóeró for áððroöeä ðõrðoóeó.  Uîáõtèoriúeä ácceóó to áîù ðroçráí or äátá   ü
ü oî tèió óùóteí ió îot ðeríitteä¬
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
ü ×AÒNÉNG                                                                    ü
ü Ôèe ðroçráíó áîä äátá ótoreä oî tèió óùóteí áre liceîóeä to¬ or áre        ü
ü ðriöáte ðroðertù of¬ ÔÅÌUS áîä áre láwfõllù áöáiláâle oîlù to áõtèoriúeä   ü
ü õóeró for áððroöeä ðõrðoóeó.  Uîáõtèoriúeä ácceóó to áîù ðroçráí or äátá   ü
ü oî tèió óùóteí ió îot ðeríitte䬠áîä áîù õîáõtèoriúeä ácceóó âeùoîä tèió   ü
ü ðoiît íáù leáä to ðroóecõtioî áîä¯or äióciðliîárù áctioî.                  ü
ü Ôèió óùóteí íáù  âe íoîitoreä át áîù tiíe for oðerátioîál reáóoîó.         ü
ü Éf ùoõ áre îot áî áõtèoriúeä õóer¬ äo îot átteíðt to loç oî.               ü
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
SÅÏS: Òeótoreä ótrrèeáä rðõt×AÒNÉNG: locëä: cáîîot coîtáct ótátä
(error ´©¬ coîtiîõiîç×AÒNÉNG: óöc_tli_ëcreáte:
xðrt_reçióter fáileä×AÒNÉNG: locëä: cáîîot coîtáct ótátä

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Mirror Root Disk with Solaris Volume Manager (SVM)

As UNIX Systems Administrators, we want our systems up and running – 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Though this could be achievable with the UNIX Operating Systems, we cannot set aside the fact that our hardware equipment are prone to wear and tear. One notable point of failure if our root or boot disks. Once it dies out – our only way is thru our backup and restore it. But there is another way that we could prevent this – if we have a spare identical disk as our root disk. We can have a redundant machine by having our root disks mirrored and make our system much reliable and omit this point of failure. Here are the step-by-step how to guide in mirroring our root/boot disk using the Solaris Volume Manager (SVM).

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Restore Solaris with ufsrestore

We had a hardware failure and we cannot seem to boot to our system. Our only option is to restore from our backup. The good thing is that we have foreseen this incident and took the liberty to have a backup of our OS. We will now use ufsrestore to bring our server up and running.

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