Disksuite from single user mode

It has been possible to access, and mount, disksuite metadevices from single user mode in solaris, for a long time now. Sadly, it has been underdocumented.

Now with the advent of ZFS, it is becoming less important, but it is still a really "good to know" thing. And, oddly, it is difficult to find the information with a google search. So I thought I'd better preserve it here.

First, boot into your emergency boot device of choice: cdrom, network boot, or whatever. (In theory, you might even be able to follow this information when booted off your regular disks in single user mode, but I havent tested that)

The idea is to force the in-memory disk suite driver to take on your "normal" disksuite configuration, which we do as follows (edit as appropriate for your rootdisk):

mount -o ro /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s0 /a
cp /a/kernel/drv/md.conf /kernel/drv/
umount /a
update_drv -f md
 # (wait a min, and dont worry about the following expected error)
 # devfsadm: mkdir failed for /dev 0x1ed: Read-only file system
metasync d0 
# (If it whines about "No such file or directory", just wait a little
# longer, or try running metastat to wake it up)
mount /dev/md/dsk/d0 /a
# dont forget to sync and mount any other filesystems, ie: /usr

This material is copyrighted by Philip Brown


Written by: Philip Brown
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