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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

Warning: 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

You cannot use the -b option to make this operation a background task.