UNIX Administratosphere

Using LVM on HP-UX can be troublesome, and any deviation from the usual steps can cause problems. Specifically, if the data on disk and the data in the system vary, then there can be a variety of problems. The usual symptom is that the LVM environment tools won’t let you do something that seems obvious (like removing a volume group when the relevant disk volume is missing).

The book Disk and File Management Tasks on HP-UX (by Tom Madell) is basically a guide to all things LVM. Despite its age (1996), it is still relevant, and covers LVM, OnlineJFS, and VxFS. The book is also not standard publishing quality, but is a bound set of facsimile pages - this doesn’t detract from the contents however.

The book covers all aspects of disk and file management, including such advanced topics as creating your own bootable root volume, recovering from loss of /etc/lvmtab, and many other details. It covers commands such as vgcreate, vgexport, vgimport, vgreduce, vgremove (and their logical volume counterparts).

It also covers converting to VxFS (from older filesystems), mirroring, and creating striped volumes.

This is a worthy addition to any HP-UX administrator’s library.