Removing Invalid Disk Device Files (/dev/dsk and /dev/rdsk)

by Jeff Hunter, Sr. Database Administrator

Overview

Whether installing a SCSI controller or even an additional IDE disk to a

Sun Solaris machine, the Solaris O/S will:

• Create Disk Device Files under the Hardware Device Tree

(/devices).
• Create symbolic links in /dev/dsk, /dev/rdsk, and /dev/cfg that
point to the devices in the /devices directory.
• Make entries in the /etc/path_to_inst file.

Things will generally work fine until you decide to remove or move a
device in the system. I have had situations where I have run out of devices
on a host because of Sun's poor ability to remove invalid (hanging) disk
device files after removing a device. This is one area where Sun could
really improve. It looks like they are trying new things with the boot -p
option but I've only ever seen it remove things once.

There are other times when I simply wanted to replace a certain type of
SCSI controller and wanted to reuse the controller ID's from a previously
removed card. For example, I have a host (an E450) which had 2 internal
controllers (0 and 1) and a dual differential SCSI card installed
(controllers 2 and 3). I removed the dual differential SCSI host adapter
and decided to replace it with a Single-Ended SCSI host adapter but
Solaris would always assign them controller numbers 4 and 5. I wanted
the system to reassign controller numbers 2 and 3 for the new host adapter
but links still existed for the original dual differential SCSI host adapter.

My intention in this article is to provide several solutions for either

renumbering disk device files (SCSI controllers, SCSI disks, IDE
controllers, IDE disks, etc.) or simply removing old ones from replaced or
removed devices. Please keep in mind that this article has been put
together from notes I found during many searches for answers on the
Internet. If anyone reading this has other solutions, please email me and I
would be happy to post them for others going through this procedure.

Using the devfsadm Command

The devfsadm command was introduced with Solaris 7 and can be found
in /usr/sbin/devfsadm. This command is used to maintain the /dev and
/devices namespaces. The devfsadm command replaces the previous
suite of devfs administration tools including drvconfig(1M), disks(1M),
 tapes(1M), ports(1M), audlinks(1M), and devlinks(1M). To maintain
backwards compatibility, all previous devfs commands are hard links to
devfsadm.

In many cases, you only need run the command:

# devfsadm -C

to invoke the cleanup routines that are not normally invoked to remove
dangling logical links.

Manual Methods

The devfsadm command was introduced with Solaris 7. For those running
older versions of Solaris (i.e. Solaris 2.6) or simply want to perform all
manual steps, this section describes the procedures to do just that.

1. Make a backup of your /etc/path_to_inst file and then modify

the file so that all that exists is the SCSI / IDE reference for the
boot drive. Remove all of the "pcipsy" and "glm" entries except for
the one that is used by the controller that has the boot drive. Take
note of the physical path of the controller you want to renumber.
2. Remove all /dev/dsk/cX* and /dev/rdsk/cX* files where X is
the controller number(s) you want to remove and even those that
no longer exist. (In the case of the example I provided on the E450,
that would be 2, 3, 4, and 5.)
3. Remove all /dev/cfg/cX symbolic links where X is the
controller(s) you want to remove. Make sure to not remove the
controller with the boot drive. (Again, in the case of the example I
provided on the E450, that would be 2, 3, 4, and 5.) It turns out this
was one of the crucial steps that needed to be complete in order for
Solaris to reuse controller numbers 2 and 3. The O/S was not able
to reassign both of these controller numbers while the links
(/dev/cfg/2 and /dev/cfg/3) still existed.
4. Remove all files under /devices/* for the controller you want to
remove or renumber as indicated in Step #1.
5. Remove all files in /dev/sdXX* that symbolically link to
controller(s) you do not want anymore. This may not be
completely necessary, but it does clean things up.
6. Reboot the server with the "-srv" option:

ok boot -srv