vxconfigd(1M)

Starts vxconfigd in disabled mode. disable creates a rendezvous file for utilities that perform various diagnostic or initialization operations. disable can be used with the -r reset option as part of a command sequence to completely reinitialize the Volume Manager configuration. Use the vxdctl enable operation to enable vxconfigd.

Starts vxconfigd fully enabled (default). enable uses the volboot file to bootstrap and load in the rootdg disk group. It then scans all known disks for disk groups to import and imports those disk groups. enable also sets up the /dev/vx/dsk and /dev/vx/rdsk directories to define all of the accessible Volume Manager devices. If the volboot file cannot be read, or if the rootdg disk group cannot be imported, vxconfigd starts in disabled mode.

Specifies the path name to use for the volboot file. This is primarily useful with the stub debug option. The volboot file contains an initial list of disks that are used to locate the root disk group. It also contains a host ID that is stored on disks in imported disk groups to define ownership of disks as a sanity check for disks that might be accessible from more than one host.

Removes and recreates the /etc/vx/tempdb directory. This directory stores configuration information that is cleared after system reboots (or cleared for specific disk groups on import and deport operations). If the contents of this directory are corrupted, due to a disk I/O failure for example, vxconfigd will not start up if it is killed and restarted. Such a situation can be cleared by starting vxconfigd with -x cleartempdir. This option has no effect if vxconfigd is not started in enabled mode.

Note: It is advisable to kill any running operational commands (vxvol, vxsd, or vxmend) before using the -x cleartempdir option. Failure to do so may cause these commands to fail, or may cause disastrous but unchecked interactions between those commands and the issuance of new commands. It is okay to use this option while running Volume Manager's Graphical User Interface, or while VxVM background daemons are running (vxsparecheck, vxnotify, or vxrelocd).

Specifies a directory path name to prefix for any disk device accessed by vxconfigd. For example, with devprefix=/tmp, any access to a raw disk device named c2t1d0 would actually be directed to the file /tmp/dev/rdsk/c2t1d0. In stubbed mode, vxconfigd can operate with such files being regular files. vxconfigd only requires entries in the prefixdir /dev/rdsk directory in stubbed mode. See stub below for more information.

Logs all vxconfigd console output directly to a file. This method of logging is very reliable in that any messages output before a system crash are available in the log file (if the crash did not corrupt the file system). You can enable direct vxconfigd logging with the -x log argument, and turn it off with the -x nolog argument. Logging is disabled by default.

If direct logging is enabled, the default log file is /var/adm/vxconfigd.log. This option can be used in conjunction with syslog | nosyslog. See syslog | nosyslog below for more information.

The following command:

logs all debug and error messages to the specified log file.

Specifies an alternate vxconfigd direct log file. This option requires using the -x log argument.

vxconfigd usually configures disk devices that can be found by inspecting kernel disk drivers automatically. These auto_configured disk devices are not stored in persistent configurations, but are regenerated from kernel tables after every reboot. Invoking vxconfigd with -x noautoconfig prevents the automatic configuration of disk devices, forcing Volume Manager to use only those disk devices configured explicitly using vxdisk define or vxdisk init.

Runs vxconfigd single-threaded.

Specifies not to communicate configuration changes to the kernel. stub is typically used as a demonstration mode of operation for vxconfigd. In most aspects, a stubbed vxconfigd behaves like a regular vxconfigd, except that disk devices can be regular files and volume nodes are not created. A stubbed vxconfigd can run concurrently with a regular vxconfigd, or concurrently with any other stubbed vxconfigd processes, as long as different rendezvous, volboot, and disk files are used for each concurrent process.

Other Volume Manager utilities can detect when they are connected to a vxconfigd that is running in stubbed mode. When a VM utility detects a stubbed-mode vxconfigd, the utility typically stubs out any direct use of volumes or plexes itself. This allows utilities to make configuration changes in a testing environment that runs without any communication with the kernel or creation of real volumes or plexes.

vxconfigd supports using the syslog() library call to log all of its console messages (this includes error, warning, and notice messages, but not debug messages). You can enable syslog() logging using the -x syslog argument, and turn it off with the -x nosyslog argument. You can also enable syslog() logging at boot-time by editing the VxVM startup scripts.

syslog can be specified along with log (described above) to obtain more reliable logging. For example:

logs all debug messages to the specified log file, and logs all error messages to both the direct log file and the syslog.log file. Note: syslog() logging works only on systems where vxconfigd is compiled with support for the syslog() library calls (see syslogd(1M)).

Flushes tracefile data to disk, invoking fsync, to ensure that the last entry is included in the file even if the system crashes.

Attaches a date and time-of-day timestamp to all messages written by vxconfigd to the console. If mstimestamp is used, a millisecond value is also displayed, allowing detailed timing of vxconfigd's operation.

Logs all possible tracing information to the specified file.