AIX 5 migrations

From: Bill Verzal (BVerzal@KOMATSUNA.COM)
Date: Mon Nov 10 2003 - 09:13:15 EST


Hi everyone

I upgraded my H-80 to AIX 5.2 this weekend. I thought I'd inform you of a
PMR I had to open with IBM and the result of the call.

When the migration install finished, the system rebooted and went to "AIX
is starting". Then it gave me a nice empty stare. For a long time.

No disk activity, so I rebooted again (after about 30-minutes). Same
thing.

So I called IBM and here is what we found.

"There exists, under certain conditions, a situation where a migrated
server will not reboot after a migration."

Yup - the install will fail. You'll need to reload a mksysb and start
again. The fix ?

      Unmirror rootvg first.

The AIX 5.2 migration MIGHT die if you migrate a mirrored rootvg. The
developers at IBM are not yet sure what the problem is. They are
considering writing this into the migration guide at this point.

Symptoms: System will not boot
Fixes: Run fsck, synclvodm, etc - none will fix the problem.
Nothing will work, even though the commands run fine (and might even fix
something)

Fortunately, in my case, I was not affected by this particular bug. In my
case however, here is what happened to me:

      On the /SPOT, /etc/filesystems had no entry for "/tmp" in it, so I
had to "grep -p" and "sed" to create a new entry and append it to
/etc/filesystems
      Then, I could run "fsck" on /tmp. At this point, we were not sure if
my system had "the bug" or not. So watch for the missing "/tmp".
      My bos.mp was still 4.3.3.75 and did not migrate.
      My devices.ssa.disk.rte was still 4.3.3.x and did not migrate.
      Trying to install the filesets in "recovery" mode failed because the
script "/usr/lib/instl/rminstal" failed. We placed an "exit 0" in that
script and the install worked fine.
      Once we set the bootlist and fixed the above problems, the system
booted fine.

So, simply put, have a mksysb or 2, and unmirror rootvg before you start
and AIX 5.2 migrations.

BV
--------------------------------------------------------

"If everything is coming your way, then you are in the wrong lane"

Bill Verzal
AIX Administrator, Komatsu America
(847) 970-3726 - direct
(847) 970-4184 - fax



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