Initializing and Starting a Volume
If you create a volume using the vxassist command, vxassist initializes and starts the volume automatically unless you specify the attribute init=none.
When creating a volume, you can make it immediately available for use by specifying the -b option to the vxassist command, as shown here:
# vxassist -b [-g diskgroup] make volume length layout=mirror
The -b option makes VxVM carry out any required initialization as a background task. It also greatly speeds up the creation of striped volumes by initializing the columns in parallel.
As an alternative to the -b option, you can specify the init=active attribute to make a new volume immediately available for use. In this example, init=active is specified to prevent VxVM from synchronizing the empty data plexes of a new mirrored volume:
# vxassist [-g diskgroup] make volume length layout=mirror \
init=active
 Caution
There is a very small risk of errors occurring when the init=active attribute is used. Although written blocks are guaranteed to be consistent, read errors can arise in the unlikely event that fsck attempts to verify uninitialized space in the file system, or if a file remains uninitialized following a system crash. If in doubt, use the -b option to vxassist instead.
This command writes zeroes to the entire length of the volume and to any log plexes. It then makes the volume active. You can also zero out a volume by specifying the attribute init=zero to vxassist, as shown in this example:
# vxassist [-g diskgroup] make volume length layout=raid5 \
init=zero
Note
You cannot use the -b option to make this operation a background task.
Initializing and Starting a Volume Created Using vxmake
A volume may be initialized by running the vxvol command if the volume was created by the vxmake command and has not yet been initialized, or if the volume has been set to an uninitialized state.
To initialize and start a volume, use the following command:
# vxvol [-g diskgroup] start volume
The following command can be used to enable a volume without initializing it:
# vxvol [-g diskgroup] init enable volume
This allows you to restore data on the volume from a backup before using the following command to make the volume fully active:
# vxvol [-g diskgroup] init active volume
If you want to zero out the contents of an entire volume, use this command to initialize it:
# vxvol [-g diskgroup] init zero volume
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