Sun Fire V440 Server
 
Sun Netra 440 Server
 

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Applies to:

Goal

 Provide steps necessary to delete a previously created mirrored (via the onboard LSI controller) volume on the internal disk drives of a Sun Fire[TM] V440 or  Netra[tm] 440  when there is no bootable root drive available.

Fix

Steps to Follow
If you have a V440 or N440 that is currently mirroring two of the internal disk drives by utilizing the onboard hardware raid functionality of the LSI scsi controller there are times when you may want to delete the raid volume without having a bootable drive (for example if the system is in the process of being re-provisioned and you will be doing a new install but the previous user had mirroring setup).

There is no supported process for configuring/deleting raid volumes at the OBP level so you must use the raidctl command in Solaris to delete the existing volume. Since in this scenario the boot drive is not usable we need to utilize an alternate boot device. The best options are either booting the Solaris install media (cdrom or DVD) into single user mode via the "boot cdrom -s" command at the ok prompt. Or we can accomplish the same thing by booting single user mode off a jumpstart image if you have this setup for your network with the command "boot net -s".

Once you are booted into single user mode you will be able to use the raidctl command normally to check the status of the raid volume, delete the current raid volume, or even create a new volume:

at this point you can halt the system and proceed with an install and you will have access to all of the internal disks normally once again.

Internal Comments

There are some commands that you can use at the OBP level to delete previously created RAID volumes on the V440. These commands are not "supported" and are being added here for Sun support personnel for use where for some reason deletion via the 'raidctl' command either does not work or is not possible. This is a rare case but these steps can be very useful when needed.

1) At the OBP level set autoboot? to false; set fcode-debug? to true; then reset the system.

{0} ok setenv auto-boot? false
auto-boot? =          false
{0} ok setenv fcode-debug? true
fcode-debug? =        true
{0} ok reset-all

2) After the system resets you need to select the scsi device that the volume was created on. For V440 the internal backplane is  /pci@1f,700000/scsi@2

{0} ok select /pci@1f,700000/scsi@2

3) Now we need to check to see what volumes are on that device. Use the 'show-volumes' command.

{0} ok show-volumes
Volume 1  Enabled  71132927 Blocks, 34732 MB
 	Disk 0  Primary 
   	Channel 0  Target 1   SEAGATE ST336607LSUN36G 0407
 	Disk 1  Secondary 
   	Channel 0  Target 2   SEAGATE ST336607LSUN36G 0407

4) Using the volume number obtained from the previous step we can delete the volume using the 'delete-volume' command. The usage is '<volume#> delete-volume'.

{0} ok delete-volume
usage is <volume> delete-volume
{0} ok
{0} ok 1 delete-volume
The volume and its data will be deleted
Are you sure you want to continue (yes/no)?  [no] yes
Volume 1 has been deleted
{0} ok

5) To confirm that the volume has been deleted use the 'show-volumes' command again.

{0} ok show-volumes
No volumes to show
{0} ok 

6) We can now set the NVRAM parameters back to their original settings and reset the system.

{0} ok setenv auto-boot? true
auto-boot? =          true
{0} ok setenv fcode-debug? false
fcode-debug? =        false
{0} ok reset-all
{0} ok

Note: In some very rare cases more than one volume could be created on a V440. This is not a supported configuration and should not normally be able to be done, but when it happens this procedure should allow you to delete every existing volume by using the 'delete-volume' command once for each volume listed.

V440, raidctl, raid1, RAID Volume, mirror

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