If all mirrors of a volume become STALE, you can place the volume in maintenance mode. Before you put the volume in maintenance mode, make sure the volume is stopped or it is in the DISABLED state. Then you can view the plexes while the volume is DETACHED and determine which plex to use for reviving the others. To place a volume in maintenance mode, use the following command:

# vxvol [-g diskgroup] maint volume

To assist in choosing the revival source plex, use vxprint to list the stopped volume and its plexes.

To take a plex offline, (in this example, vol01-02 in the disk group, mydg), use the following command:

# vxmend -g mydg off vol01-02

Make sure that all the plexes are offline except for the one that you will use for revival. The plex from which you will revive the volume should be placed in the STALE state. The vxmend on command can change the state of an OFFLINE plex of a DISABLED volume to STALE. For example, to put the plex vol101-02 in the STALE state, use the following command:

# vxmend -g mydg on vol101-02

Running the vxvol start command on the volume then revives the volume with the specified plex. Because you are starting the volume from a stale plex, you must specify the force option ( -f).

By using the procedure above, you can enable the volume with each plex, and you can decide which plex to use to revive the volume.

After you specify a plex for revival, and you use the procedure above to enable the volume with the specified plex, put the volume back into the DISABLED state and put all the other plexes into the STALE state using the vxmend on command. Now, you can recover the volume.