Opinions: root mirror recovery

[Allen Todd]

Brett Albertson wrote:
> 
> 
> > Why? Why? ISTR I've replaced root disks in our SSAs by simply
> > replacing the disk, initialising it, & adding it as a (bootable)
> > mirror. Why all this prtvtoc stuff?
> 
> Imagine this scenario:
> You install Solaris 2.5.1 on a disk, encapsulate and mirror (Let's call
> these "root" and "mirror").
> 
> The mirror will not have the original partition information, but root will.
> Let's say that root fails one day, and when you replace it, you resync the
> mirrors without formatting the disk the original way and encapsulating it.
> Now the root also is not encapsulated.
> 
> Everything is happy (two mirrored non-encapsulated disks).
> 
> Now you want to upgrade to Solaris 2.6.   Ooops.  The first step is to
> vxunroot, but you can't because neither disk is encapsulated.  This is the
> crux of the problem.
> 
> Brett Albertson				brett.albertson@stratech.com
> Senior Systems Engineer			voice	(919) 379-8449
> Strategic Technologies			fax	(919) 379-8100
> 
> 

Is that true?  I remember testing that exact scenario while at a 
Veritas Volume Manager class last year and being happily surprised that
I was able to vxunroot despite both disks being non-encapsulated. 

Allen Todd
todd@susq.com