Clearing the failing flag on a disk

If I/O errors are intermittent rather than persistent, Veritas Volume Manager sets the failing flag on a disk, rather than detaching the disk. Such errors can occur due to the temporary removal of a cable, controller faults, a partially faulty LUN in a disk array, or a disk with a few bad sectors or tracks.

If the hardware fault is not with the disk itself (for example, it is caused by problems with the controller or the cable path to the disk), you can use the vxedit command to unset the failing flag after correcting the source of the I/O error.

Warning:

Do not unset the failing flag if the reason for the I/O errors is unknown. If the disk hardware truly is failing, and the flag is cleared, there is a risk of data loss.

To clear the failing flag on a disk

  1. Use the vxdisk list command to find out which disks are failing:

      # vxdisk list
       DEVICE        TYPE           DISK       GROUP    STATUS
       c1t1d0s2      auto:sliced    mydg01     mydg     online
       c1t2d0s2      auto:sliced    mydg02     mydg     online failing
       c1t3d0s2      auto:sliced    mydg03     mydg     online
       . . .
  2. Use the vxedit set command to clear the flag for each disk that is marked as failing (in this example, mydg02):

      # vxedit set failing=off mydg02
    
  3. Use the vxdisk list command to verify that the failing flag has been cleared:

      # vxdisk list 
       DEVICE        TYPE           DISK       GROUP    STATUS
       c1t1d0s2      auto:sliced    mydg01     mydg     online
       c1t2d0s2      auto:sliced    mydg02     mydg     online
       c1t3d0s2      auto:sliced    mydg03     mydg     online
       . . .