Reattaching Failed Disks

You can perform a reattach operation if a disk could not be found at system startup, or if VxVM is started with some disk drivers unloaded and unloadable (causing disks to enter the failed state). If the underlying problem has been fixed (such as a cable or controller fault), use the vxreattach command to reattach the disks without plexes being flagged as STALE. However, the reattach must occur before any volumes on the disk are started.

The vxreattach command is called as part of disk recovery from the vxdiskadm menus and during the boot process. If possible, vxreattach reattaches the failed disk media record to the disk with the same device name. Reattachment places a disk in the same disk group that it was located in before and retains its original disk media name.

To reattach a failed disk:

1. Use the vxdisk list command to see which disks have failed, as shown in the following example:
   # vxdisk list 
   DEVICE          TYPE        DISK        GROUP     STATUS
   c1t1d0         auto:simple        mydg01        mydg     online
   c1t2d0         auto:simple        mydg02        mydg     online
   -         -        mydg03        mydg     failed was: c1t3d0
   -         -        mydg04        mydg     failed was: c1t4d0
2. Once the fault has been corrected, the disks can be reattached by using the following command to rescan the device list:
   # /usr/sbin/vxdctl enable
3. Use the vxreattach command with no options to reattach the disks:
   # /etc/vx/bin/vxreattach

After reattachment takes place, recovery may not be necessary unless a disk was faulty and had to be replaced. Reattachment can fail if the original (or another) cause for the disk failure still exists.

You can use the command vxreattach -c to check whether reattachment is possible, without performing the operation. Instead, it displays the disk group and disk media name where the disk can be reattached.

See the vxreattach(1M) manual page for more information on the vxreattach command.