Home > Veritas Storage Foundation™ Volume Manager Manual Pages

VXENCAP (1M)

Maintenance Commands

Table of contents


NAME

vxencap - encapsulate partitions on a new disk

SYNOPSIS

/etc/vx/bin/vxencap [-F ] [-c ] [-f format] [-g diskgroup] [-s privlen] [-N ]
[medianame=]accessname

/etc/vx/bin/vxencap -k {-a | accessname...}


DESCRIPTION

The vxencap script identifies any partitions on the specified disk that could be used for file systems or special areas such as swap devices, and then generates volumes to cover those areas on the disk. This process is known as encapsulation. In the case of partitions that contain file systems, the entries in /etc/vfstab are modified to use the new volume devices.

vxencap is generally called from the vxdiskadm menus or else is called at installation time from the vxinstall script. A reboot may be necessary to complete the process of encapsulation.


OPTIONS

-a
Specifies that all encapsulation requests are to be handled by this command. This option is only used with the -k option.
-c
Creates a disk group if the specified disk group does not exist. This option is used with the -g option.
-f format
Specifies the format for the disk. Two formats are supported:
cdsdisk
Specifies that the disk is to be encapsulated with the Cross-Platform Data Sharing (CDS) format. This is the default format unless overridden in the /etc/default/vxencap defaults file.

If the cdsdisk format is specified using the -f option, but it is not possible to encapsulate the disk with this format, the encapsulation fails. If the cdsdisk format is not specified on the command line, but it is not possible to encapsulate the disk with this format, the sliced format is used instead.

Note: The cylinders covering the first 128KB of the disk must be free and available for use by CDS. Slice 7 on the disk must be free and available for use. This format is not suitable for encapsulating root, boot or swap disks.

sliced
Specifies that the disk is to be encapsulated with the sliced format. If possible, 256 blocks are reserved at the end of the private region and within the public region to allow for future conversion to cdsdisk format.

Note: Two free slices must be available for use on the disk. This format is suitable for encapsulating root, boot or swap disks.

-F
Forces the encapsulation even if the disk is already in use as a VxVM disk.

Caution: This option can make the data on the disk unusable.

-g diskgroup
Places the encapsulated disk into the disk group specified by disk group ID or disk group name.
-k
Abandons encapsulation requests. If used with the -a option, all encapsulation requests are halted. Otherwise, specify the disk access names of the disks whose encapsulation is to be abandoned.
-N
Specifies that the changes logged to be made during the next reboot are not committed. Usually any system failure before the reboot causes the operations to be completed on the next reboot. If the -N option is specified, the changes are left uncompleted and the operation aborted should the system fail at any point before the successful configuration change. This is accomplished by not creating the usual /etc/vx/reconfig.d/state.d/reconfig commit file.
-s privlen
Specifies the size of the private region on the encapsulated disk. This overrides the value specified in the defaults file.


DEFAULTS FILE

The /etc/default/vxencap file can be used to set default values for the vxencap command. Values in this file override inbuilt values.

The following attributes may be specified in the defaults file:

format=format
Defines the default format. Supported values are cdsdisk and sliced. This may be overridden on the command line by specifying a format with the -f option.
privlen=length
Defines the default length for the private region. The setting of this attribute is considered for the init operation only. If not specified, the inbuilt default value is 32MB. This may be overridden on the command line by specifying a privlen value with the -s option.
privoffset=offset
Defines the default value for the offset from the start of the partition that contains the private region to the start of the private region. If not specified, the inbuilt default value is 0.
puboffset=offset
Defines the offset from the start of the partition that contains the public region to the start of the public region. If not specified, the inbuilt default value is 1 block.

The attributes and their values may be defined in any order in the file, the attribute keyword must start in the first column, and no white-space characters are allowed around the = character. If an attribute is defined multiple times, only the final occurrence in the file is used. Commands silently ignore any definition line that has an invalid format.

NOTES

The default private region size increased from 512KB to 1MB in release 3.2, and from 1MB to 32MB in release 5.0.

FILES

/etc/default/vxencap
Defaults file used by the vxencap utility.

SEE ALSO

vxdiskadm(1M), vxintro(1M)

Veritas Volume Manager Administrator's Guide

Last updated: 31 Aug 2008
Copyright ©2009 Symantec Corporation
All rights reserved.