Device ID is not unique

[nemski]

Hi Guys

I'm running Solaris 10 as a Guest on VirtualBox. I've been trying to build a RAID array with SVM to get some practise, but I'm running into an issue where the Device ID for the Hard Disks is not unique. I've tried deleting the disks and re-adding them, with no success.

Anyone got some suggestions?

[jkeil]

I'm running Solaris 10 as a Guest on VirtualBox.

Which version of Solaris 10 is that, exactly?

And which version of VirtualBox?

I've been trying to build a RAID array with SVM to get some practise, but I'm running into an issue where the Device ID for the Hard Disks is not unique. I've tried deleting the disks and re-adding them, with no success.

How are the disk drives connected in the virtualbox guest?
P-ATA? S-ATA? SCSI?


I just tried it with an OpenSolaris build 132 guest, and VBox 3.1.2.
No matter what type of disk controller I configure. the devids
for five 2TB disks are unique (checked with prtconf -Dv, and
searching for the "devid" properties).

[nemski]

Solaris 10/09 on VirtualBox 3.1.0r55467
I'm using SCSI controller and only occurs with the 3rd and 4th disks. The first 2 disks I create have unique Device IDs, but after that they repeat. I'm checking using iostat -Ei

Thanks

[jkeil]

It seems that the virtualbox emulated scsi hardware does not return unit serial numbers or wwn names
when you send scsi inquiry commands to a virtual scsi disk. In this case the Solaris disk driver sd(7d)
creates a devid for the disk and stores it somewhere at the end of the disk in a reserved area.

Did you perhaps copy / duplicate some of the hdd images on the virtualbox host? (That would have
duplicated the fabricated devid that is stored on disc, and could be a possible explanation for the
non unique devids)

Would it be possible to configure the solaris 10 guest to use a sata controller instead of scsi controller?
Virtualbox' ahci sata controller does return unit serial numbers, and that should result in unique devids.

[chefmacncheese]

I realize this is a very old thread but I've discovered a work-around for this issue.

It seems SVM copies the blocks containing the on-disk device id of the disk so once you create a mirror and sync both sides, the device id will change for the newly attached mirror devices.

If you use EFI labels (format -e), this does not occur.