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Creating ASM devices on AIX

Amit Bansal / 1 February, 2009

I thought of sharing few tips on creating ASM devices on AIX which I will be helpful to Oracle DBA's.
Suppose SysAdmin gives you list of Serial numbers for LUN instead of device Name

pcmpath query device

DEV#: 33 DEVICE NAME: hdisk33 TYPE: 2107900 ALGORITHM: Load Balance
SERIAL: 75DM011<span style="color: #ff0000;"><strong>1101</strong></span>
===========================================================================
Path# Adapter/Path Name State Mode Select Errors
0 fscsi0/path0 CLOSE NORMAL 9 0
1 fscsi1/path1 CLOSE NORMAL 8 0

In case there are lot many disks, then it could be a tiring task of running above command and finding
each device. You can use below code which will list name of devices and size (In MB) of disk.

for i in 1000 1100 1018 1118 1030 1130 104C 114C 1068 1168
do
j=`pcmpath query device|grep -p $i"$"|grep DEVICE|awk -F ":" '{print }'|awk '{print }`
k=`bootinfo -s $j`
echo $i $j $k
done

This would return following output

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1000 hdisk4 65536

1100 hdisk10 65536
1018 hdisk5 65536
1118 hdisk11 65536
1030 hdisk6 65536
1130 hdisk12 65536
104C hdisk7 65536
114C hdisk13 65536
1068 hdisk8 65536
1168 hdisk14 65536
1080 hdisk9 65536
1180 hdisk15 65536

Now if you need to create new device name, you need to use mknod command and pass on major
and minor numbers. Following code can be used to perform same

#export m=0
# for i in hdisk4 hdisk10 hdisk5 hdisk11 hdisk6 hdisk12 hdisk7 hdisk13 hdisk8 hd
do
j=`ls -la /dev/$i |awk '{print }'|awk -F "," '{print }'`
k=`ls -la /dev/$i |awk '{print }'`
m=`expr $m + 1` ;echo "mknod /dev/asm_disk"$m "c "$j $k
done

mknod /dev/asm_disk1 c 21 4
mknod /dev/asm_disk2 c 21 12
mknod /dev/asm_disk3 c 21 13
mknod /dev/asm_disk4 c 21 15
mknod /dev/asm_disk5 c 21 5
mknod /dev/asm_disk6 c 21 6
mknod /dev/asm_disk7 c 21 8
mknod /dev/asm_disk8 c 21 7
mknod /dev/asm_disk9 c 21 14
mknod /dev/asm_disk10 c 21 10
mknod /dev/asm_disk11 c 21 9
mknod /dev/asm_disk12 c 21 11

Now you can change the ownership to oracle:dba and permission to 660. I have 12 disks , so using
list of 12 variables. In case you have more disks , then you can add more variables

# for i in 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
do
chown oracle:dba /dev/asm_disk$i
chmod 660 /dev/asm_disk$i
done

crw-rw---- 1 oracle dba 21, 11 Jan 28 17:10 /dev/asm_disk12

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crw-rw---- 1 oracle dba 21, 9 Jan 28 17:10 /dev/asm_disk11

crw-rw---- 1 oracle dba 21, 10 Jan 28 17:10 /dev/asm_disk10
crw-rw---- 1 oracle dba 21, 14 Jan 28 17:04 /dev/asm_disk9
crw-rw---- 1 oracle dba 21, 7 Jan 28 17:04 /dev/asm_disk8
crw-rw---- 1 oracle dba 21, 8 Jan 28 17:04 /dev/asm_disk7
crw-rw---- 1 oracle dba 21, 6 Jan 28 17:04 /dev/asm_disk6
crw-rw---- 1 oracle dba 21, 5 Jan 28 17:04 /dev/asm_disk5
crw-rw---- 1 oracle dba 21, 15 Jan 28 17:04 /dev/asm_disk4
crw-rw---- 1 oracle dba 21, 13 Jan 28 17:04 /dev/asm_disk3
crw-rw---- 1 oracle dba 21, 12 Jan 28 17:04 /dev/asm_disk2
crw-rw---- 1 oracle dba 21, 4 Jan 28 17:04 /dev/asm_disk1

In case you need to use same logic for creating OCR and Voting disks on RAC system, replace
/dev/asm with /dev/ocr or /dev/voting . I hope this would save some time and also prevent errors

In case you have disks in ordered number,say 53 to 62 then you can also use for loop as below.

#bash
bash-3.00#
#export m=0
#for ((i=53;i<=62;i++))
do
j=`ls -la /dev/hdisk$i |awk '{print }'|awk -F "," '{print }'`
k=`ls -la /dev/hdisk$i |awk '{print }'`
m=`expr $m + 1` ;echo "mknod /dev/asm_disk"$m "c "$j $k
done
#for ((i=1;i<=10;i++))
do
chown oracle:dba /dev/asm_disk$i
chmod 660 /dev/asm_disk$i
done

I would suggest anyone using the scripts to first check in a test environment.

Related Posts
10.2.0.4 on AIX5L (64-Bit) is Out
ASM Disk Discovery
CRS Fails to Start – 10.2.0.1 RAC Install on AIX
Effect of OS Terminal Setting “STTY” on Oracle Database
How To Discover Disk Name When LUN Number is Known (OEL5)

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1 February, 2009 in 10g. Tags: 10g, AIX5L, ASM, oracle, RAC, Unix
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7 thoughts on “Creating ASM devices on AIX”

John Rigler 2 October, 2009 at 7:28 pm

Instead of running the mknod, why not just do an ln of the rdisk:

(these two should be the same)

mknod /dev/asm_disk1 c 21 4
ln rhdisk4 asm_disk1

If you can find a way to increment the disk # easily, you would be golden and it would
save a few lines

Reply

Amit 9 October, 2009 at 3:55 am

John,

You can use soft links but oracle recommend's using mknod to create link.
You can use following code to increment disk#

for i in 1960 20CD 20CE 20CF 21CD 21CE

do
j=`pcmpath query device|grep -p $i"$"|grep DEVICE|awk -F ":"
'{print $3}'|awk '{print $1}`
k=`bootinfo -s $j`
a=`ls -la /dev/$j |awk '{print $5}'|awk -F "," '{print $1}'`
b=`ls -la /dev/$j |awk '{print $6}'`

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b=`echo $b |awk '{x=$0+0; print x}'`

if [ b -le 1 ]
then
b=`ls -la /dev/$j |awk '{print $5}'|awk -F "," '{print $2}'`
fi
if [ m -le 8 ]
then
m=`expr $m + 1` ;echo "mknod /dev/asm_disk0"$m "c "$a $b
else
m=`expr $m + 1` ;echo "mknod /dev/asm_disk"$m "c "$a $b
fi
done

-Amit

Reply

Martin 19 August, 2010 at 2:09 pm

Hi there,

check out this post, might be a copy of yours!

http://gjilevski.wordpress.com/2010/02/16/creating-asm-devices-on-aix/

The author has copied other user’s material in countless occasions without giving
credit.

Reply

Amit 19 August, 2010 at 2:46 pm

Yeah Martin. This seems to be exact copy.I have put a comment, let’s see
what he has to say.

Thanks for pointing it.

Cheers
Amit

Reply

Lucas 15 July, 2011 at 7:31 pm

http://askdba.org/weblog/2009/02/creating-asm-devices-on-aix/ 5/9
3/7/2018 Creating ASM devices on AIX - AskDba.org Weblog

Thanks to your instructions, I was able to get this working once before. However, I
am trying to do it again and I’m running into trouble. When I try to create the ASM
disk group during the grid infrastructure installation, the disks do not show up. In my
case, the disks I’m trying to add are EMC powerpath disks. Any idea what could
cause them to not show up?

Reply

Saurabh Sood 16 July, 2011 at 9:02 am

Hi Lucas,

If you have set set asm_diskstring parameter to correct value i.e, something like
/dev/rhd* (in case of emcpowerpath) the disks should be visible to you.

If still the disks are not getting shown please check Metalink note 1174604.1 “ASM Is
Not Detecting EMC PowerPath Raw Devices Or Regular Raw Devices On AIX” as
there could be some permissions issue.

Regards,
Saurabh Sood

Reply

Natarajan Gounder 14 March, 2017 at 10:00 pm

Thanks for the sharp article.

It would be to name as /dev/asmdisk_data_nn for DATA, /dev/asmdisk_ocr_nn for
OCR/Voting (12c), and /dev/asmdisk_fra_nn for FRA and then asm_diskstring could
be like “/dev/asmdisk*” for ALL disks to be discovered by ASM. It is good way to do
for Oracle Grid 12c where ocr/voting disks could be in/part of ASM Disk groups.
thanks again.
Natarajan

Reply

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