Out of Sync: Maddy's Blog

If you want to know which x64 servers are certified with VMware, then this page is very useful:

http://www.sun.com/software/vmware/certification.jsp

For what it is worth!

One of the problems with x64 when the node is crashing continuously is the unavailability of the non-cluster mode in the GRUB menu.

  To workaround the problem, when the grub menu is displayed, choose "e" to edit the regular boot option, "e" to edit once again and add a -x option at the end and then press "b" to continue booting. This problem doesn't occur if the node is rebooted with the

#reboot -- -x

 command when it is in cluster mode (you can find a reboot_transient state added to the menu).  The problem I suspect is due to the boot-archive file on x64.



 

 SMF repository corruption is one irritating issue in Solaris 10 with x64 systems.  When you are hitting the issue,  you will see something like this:

Problem

svc.configd: smf(5) database integrity check of:

    /etc/svc/repository.db

  failed. The database might be damaged or a media error might have
  prevented it from being verified.  Additional information useful to
  your service provider is in:

    /etc/svc/volatile/db_errors

  The system will not be able to boot until you have restored a working
  database.  svc.startd(1M) will provide a sulogin(1M) prompt for recovery
  purposes.  The command:

    /lib/svc/bin/restore_repository

  can be run to restore a backup version of your repository.  See
  http://sun.com/msg/SMF-8000-MY for more information.

Requesting System Maintenance Mode
svc.configd exited with status 102 (database initialization failure)

Root password for system maintenance (control-d to bypass): 
single-user privilege assigned to /dev/console.
Entering System Maintenance Mode

Solution

What the system doesn't tell you is that the / file system is mounted as read only!  Hence, you need to remount the file system in rw mode before executing the recovery script :

 # mount -o remount,rw /
# /lib/svc/bin/restore_repository

See http://sun.com/msg/SMF-8000-MY for more information on the use of
this script to restore backup copies of the smf(5) repository.

If there are any problems which need human intervention, this script will
give instructions and then exit back to your shell.

Note that upon full completion of this script, the system will be rebooted
using reboot(1M), which will interrupt any active services.

repository-*-[0-9]*[0-9]: No such file or directory
There are no available backups of /etc/svc/repository.db.
The only available repository is "-seed-".  Note that restoring the seed
will lose all customizations, including those made by the system during
the installation and/or upgrade process.

Enter -seed- to restore from the seed, or -quit- to exit: -seed-

After confirmation, the following steps will be taken:

svc.startd(1M) and svc.configd(1M) will be quiesced, if running.
/etc/svc/repository.db
    -- renamed --> /etc/svc/repository.db_old_20070807_083027
/lib/svc/seed/global.db
    -- copied --> /etc/svc/repository.db
and the system will be rebooted with reboot(1M).

Proceed [yes/no]?

For what its worth!