Asset ID:	1-72-1009316.1
Update Date:	2009-12-04
Keywords:

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Solution Type  Problem Resolution Sure

Solution  1009316.1 :   Stale or Obsolete Device Label for a Storage Device in Solaris[TM]  


PreviouslyPublishedAs
212895

Symptoms
The ASCII label and size information can become stale on a RAID Storage subsystem after resizing the SCSI disk storage they present, as well as updates to both hardware and firmware on the arrays.

• Resizing volumes using Dynamic Volume Expansion for 2500, 6000, and Flexline based storage arrays
• Resizing volumes using LUSE functions in the 9900 storage arrays
• Conversion from an Open-X to LUSE LDEV type in 9900 storage arrays.
• The firmware revision for the device still shows the older revisions after a firmware update on the storage array.
  

Resolution
The ASCII label is most notably seen in the format utility. Product and Vendor Identification, as well as the device size are derived from the SCSI Inquiry information supplied by the array. The reason that the information can show up as stale, or the size information is not correct, is because the format utility gets its information from the existing label on the device.

Correcting this requires that you gather the SCSI inquiry data again, and commit it to the disk device by labeling it.

NOTE:  There is no overwhelming reason to change this ASCII label to match the
current firmware of the array, since firmware versions may change
relatively frequently.  The only reason this activity should be attempted is
for resizing devices. 

NOTE 2:  The process of re-labeling the device requires an outage of activity to the
device.  This means that software based volume managers must be updated to stop traffic
to these devices, along with un-mounting any file systems from the server prior to this
activity.

1.  Stop All IO to the disk device.  If this   

2. Save the partition table:

   # prtvtoc /dev/rdsk/c#t#d#s2 > /tmp/prtvtoc.out

3. Label the device in format.

   # format c#t#d#s2
     format> type
      [from the selections, choose "0. Auto configure"]
     format> label
     format> quit

4. Restore the partition table:

   # fmthard -s /tmp/prtvtoc.out /dev/rdsk/c#t#d#s2

Additional Information
For additional information on Disk Labels in Solaris:

•   <Document: 1017927.1> Solaris[TM]: Understanding the Disk Label (VTOC)
•   <Document: 1012091.1> EFI disk labels in Solaris

Product
Sun StorageTek T3+ Array
Sun StorageTek T3 Array
Sun StorageTek A5000 Array
Sun StorageTek A3500 Array
Sun StorageTek A3000

volume labeling, vol list, format, disk label, T3, 3900, 6900, 6120, 6320, VTOC, asciilabel, type, raid, array, lun, label, stale, resize, minnow, 3510, 3310, size, disk, corrupt, wrong, magic, number, 6140, 6130, 6180, flx240, flx280, flx380, 6540, 6580, 6780, 2510, 2530, 2540

Change History
Date: 2006-01-18
User Name: 7058
Action: Update Canceled
Comment: *** Restored Published Content *** SSH AUDIT
Version: 0
Date: 2006-01-18
User Name: 7058
Action: Update Started
Comment: SSH AUDIT
Version: 0

Date: 2009-12-04
User: DeCotis
Comment: Updated Symptom and Resolution sections to make the it more generic. Also merged content from doc 206624 in an effort to consolidate the content and remove redundancy.
Updated the title and the product list.

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