Re: [SUMMARY] editing path_to_inst

From: Bruce Kirkland <Bruce_Kirkland_at_polk.com>
Date: Thu Oct 21 2004 - 15:59:36 EDT
You can edit path_to_inst if you are very careful., but it is not
supported by Sun. I should more properly say "remove lines", or "cut out
the junk". I for one have had lots of problems w/path_to_inst and that
probably stems from the fact that we make a lot of disk chages here that
don't always get properly cleaned rigth away - our bad. While many swear
by the old boot -ar I have found that to be a problem on all my SAN
attached servers (after you answer the questions and say Y to "rebuild
path_to_inst" fsck appears to get confused and I end up in read only
mode - Sun can't seem to fix this). My favorite technique is to either
boot net -s or boot cdrom -s and mount the boot disk on /mnt and
devfsadm -C -r /mnt -p /mnt/etc/path_to_inst. Umount everything and
boot. Of course you must rmove the unwanted entries from /dev/dsk and
/dev/rdsk first - I usually do everything but the boot disk(s) and let
the system rebuild everything from scratch. 

>>> "Bruce Kirkland" <Bruce_Kirkland@polk.com> 10/18/2004 4:04:04 PM
>>>
I know you are not supposed to edit /etc/path_to_inst by hand. Having
said that I've found reasons to do so. Example1: when flashing new
firmware into an Emulex lp9002-dce you will probably end up with
either
devices numbered wrong (i.e. lpfc0 is now lpfc4) and/or you will end
up
with 2 sets of lpfc devices, none of which are any good to you.
Example2: you need to rebuild path_to_inst because you have too many
disk entries (around 32k max) when you are migrating from one storage
array to another. I dutifully remove old /dev/dsk, /dev/rdsk entries,
boot from cdrom, mv /etc/path_to_inst somewhere, devfsadm -r /mnt -p
/mnt/path_to_inst, boot and my qfe connections are not usable - not
sure
why because basically it just changed the order of the qfe entries in
my
path_to_inst. 
So I personally feel justified but not very confident in editing
/etc/path_to_inst. I'm looking for better info on -> guidelines for
editing path_to_inst, helpful hints whatever ya got and/or -> a better
understanding of how it is used which might help me resolve these
problems. Sun keeps telling me to do the devfsadm procedure, just like
they always used to say boot -ar. I have not found either process very
reliable. 


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This message has originated from R.L. Polk & Co.,
26955 Northwestern Highway Southfield, MI 48034

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Received on Fri Oct 22 11:24:58 2004

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