johnson@horta.rice.edu (Bruce Johnson) (03/01/91)
We also had what sounds like a similar varyon/varyoff problem. Don't know of any fix besides the install-from-scratch once there is a volume group that you are not allowed to trash. That is, the Device Configuration Database apparently developed a conflict so the vg could not be varyon'd until it was first varyoff'd, despite the fact that it was not active. It is like needing car insurance before you can get a driver's license while needing a license before you can get insurance. After talking to Austin about my particular problem, it turned out (of course) that it was my own doing because I had brought up the machine without the disks that belonged to that volume group. No problem on many other workstations, but under AIX 3, I guess one must honor the export/import volume group options in order to physically remove/insert these disks and not screw up the database. In other words, the machine must be told explicitly to mark the disks or file systems or whatever for export as a security issue, preventing somebody from physically moving disks to other machines and bypassing internal security. I am sure someone on the net can provide more detail than I can, but a guess (especially with AIX changes of things like /etc/passwd) is that IBM is interested in providing more security than ordinary UNIX for inroads into the government markets. At any rate, reading the Info stuff on ODM and ODME has not made me any wiser on how to manually fix the database. I would be very grateful if someone could provide me with a pointer for this. -- Bruce Johnson Chemistry Dept, Rice Univ johnson@horta.rice.edu