I recently inherited sysadmin for a DEC 3000 machine with 4 HDs on it running
OSF1 v3.0, which I will be rebuilding to DU4.0 and clustering. One disk
currently and will hold the system, the rest are user data disks which I want
to touch as little as possible. In looking into the current setup, one of
the data disks (a RZ28 I believe, will certainly check before proceeding)
is mounted as a single partition (c), but when I try to view the disklabel for
it I get the error:
Bad pack magic number (label is damaged, or pack is unlabeled)
The disk is however, working fine---actually contains users home directories
and they're reading and writing to it w/out problem. I assume the disk was
probably never labelled or something and that the OS is using its default
label for that type of disk. It is quite possible that the label situation
on that disk has been that way for years.
1) Should I be extremely nervous about this situation? I am not taking this
as a warning of imminent drive failure; should I be?
All else equal, I would feel more comfortable if the drive was properly
labelled; if only because "false error" messages only make debugging real
problems harder down the road. I would prefer not to have to take the system
down, back up the filesystem to tape, label the disk, then restore from
tape, and if my understanding about what disklabelling is actually doing I
don't believe this is necessary.
2) Am I correct in believing that if I label the disk so that partition c
in the new label is the same as it was on the default/old label, that the
filesystem should not be aware that anything has happened?
3) Anybody know offhand what OSF1 V3.0 uses for default disklabel?
Thanks in advance.
Tom Payerle
Dept of Physics payerle_at_physics.umd.edu
University of Maryland (301) 405-6973
College Park, MD 20742-4111 Fax: (301) 314-9525
PS: I will be backing up system either way, just wanting to know if it will
be a pre-emptive (bring the umbrella so it won't rain) back-up or if it will
really be needed.
Received on Mon Aug 31 1998 - 22:59:20 NZST