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Accessing a volume

As soon as a volume has been created and initialized, it is available for use as a virtual disk partition by the operating system for the creation of a file system, or by application programs such as relational databases and other data management software.

Creating a volume in a disk group sets up block and character (raw) device files that can be used to access the volume:

/dev/vx/dsk/diskgroup/volume block device file for volume

/dev/vx/rdsk/diskgroup/volume character device file for volume

The pathnames include a directory named for the disk group. Use the appropriate device node to create, mount and repair file systems, and to lay out databases that require raw partitions.

As the rootdg disk group no longer has special significance, VxVM only creates volume device nodes for this disk group in the /dev/vx/dsk/rootdg and /dev/vx/rdsk/rootdg directories. VxVM does not create device nodes in the /dev/vx/dsk or /dev/vx/rdsk directories for the rootdg disk group.