Nonrecoverable conditions [ Mirrored Disk/iX User's Guide ] MPE/iX 5.0 Documentation
Mirrored Disk/iX User's Guide
Nonrecoverable conditions
The following error conditions are nonrecoverable:
* Failure of both mirrored drives.
* Failure of both split-volume set halves.
* Failure of the source drive during the repair operation.
* Drive failure during join.
If both mirrored drives fail
When a single drive of a pair fails, a period of time exists while the
drive is replaced and the new one is repaired. If the remaining drive
fails during this time, the failure is identical to a disk drive failure
on a non-mirrored system.
If both split volume set halves fail
If both the user volumes and backup volumes suffer a disk failure, the
situation is nonrecoverable. This applies even if the volumes were not
previously mirrored partners (same copies), but different members of the
volume set. Either the user volumes or backup volumes must be complete
in order for the volume set to return to a known consistent point. User
volumes and backup volumes may not be mixed to create a volume set. The
split-volume set cannot be joined, and must be recreated.
If a drive fails during the repair operation
Whenever there is an unexpected failure that necessitates a rebooting of
the system, or when a split-volume set is joined into a mirrored volume
set, all mirrored pairs undergo a repair process. This is necessary to
guarantee the consistency of the disks. During the repair operation, one
disk is copied to the other. If the source disk fails during this
period, there is no way to recover from it without restoring the files
from tape.
If the source drive of a staged or repairing volume pair becomes
unresponsive (due to loss of power, for example) or suffers a hard error,
the system behaves just as if there were no mirroring present. If the
destination drive of a repairing volume pair becomes unresponsive or
suffers a hard error, it is marked DISABLED. If the destination drive of
a staged volume pair becomes unresponsive after being staged, but before
transitioning to be repaired, it is marked DISABLED at repair time.
If a drive fails during the join operation
This is a more specific case of a failure during repair. If a
JOINMIRRSET completes and during the repair one of the REPAIR-SRCE disks
becomes disbaled, the volume set cannot be recovered and has to be
reloaded.
Additionally, the system cannot recover from the following user errors:
* Improper use of the SUSPENDMIRRVOL command.
* Software errors.
* Direct modification of disk.
If you misuse the SUSPENDMIRRVOL command
It is possible through the use of the SUSPENDMIRRVOL command to force the
system to mount and use a drive that is bad. Because of drive errors, it
may not have been possible to mark the drive itself as bad when the
errors occurred. Now if the volume set is remounted without the good
partner, there may be no way for the system to know that the drive is
bad. In this case the use of the SUSPENDMIRRVOL command could force the
mounting of the bad drive, which may contain data that has not been
updated. While this situation is highly unlikely, care must be taken
when using this command to ensure that the disk in question is good.
If you create a software error
A mirrored disk system offers no protection against software errors that
mistakenly write bad data to disk. The bad data is mirrored just as any
other writing to disk.
If you modify a disk
Privileged mode users could, through DEBUG, make modification to one
partner of a mirrored pair without notifying the mirrored disk system.
This causes the partner disks to be inconsistent and could lead to
unpredictable results.
MPE/iX 5.0 Documentation