How do I mirror root with Disksuite when /boot is a separate fdisk partition?

How do I mirror root with Disksuite when /boot is a separate fdisk partition?

You don't. Disksuite only supports mirroring ufs filesystems, so in order
to mirror /boot, it should be part of the root (/) slice inside Sun's fdisk
partition. Sun's default install will create a separate 10MB "x86 Boot"
fdisk partition which is mounted as pcfs. If you already have Disksuite
running the solution is as follows:


Start with all the mirrors in place except for the :boot partition
and had identical layouts on both disks.


  1. Back up all my important stuff.
  2. Use metadb to delete the state db's on the Disk 1 and Disk 2 ( I have
    Disk 3 and Disk 4 for the time being).
  3. Get a tar backup of /boot directory and save it in / (root)
  4. metadetach and metaclear all the Submirror's from the Disksuite
    db's on disk 2.
  5. Recreate Disk 2 Partition table (using fdisk) to be 100% Solaris and
    rebuild Solaris Partition(Slice) table (using prtvtoc/fmthard)
  6. Re-mirror Disk 2 So it's almost identical to how it was at the
    beginning, except the x86 partition table is now one big Solaris partition.
    I.e., starting at the very beginning of the disk.
    This is very important, otherwise the bootblock installation won't work.
  7. Untar the boot directory tar file so now i've /boot ufs mirror
    under the / mount.
  8. Do step 4 on Disk 1.
  9. Do step 5 on Disk 1.
  10. Do step 6 on Disk 1.
  11. Run 'installboot' on Disk 1 and Disk 2 (hint: the man page is ambiguous on
    this, but Sunsolve doc says it must be run on slice 2
    [it's obvious if you think about it]).
  12. Add state db's using metadb on Disk 1 and Disk 2.
  13. Edit /etc/vfstab and took out the :boot entry because it's now in the /
    fs.
  14. Reboot with /usr/sbin/reboot
  15. Test boot in single-user mode from either drive.



[Thanks to "Nick" via John D. Groenveld]



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