asm under OL and VBox

[edstevens]

Am trying to build a personal test system for a single instance ASM setup under OL 5.7 using VBox. I'm using the instructions from "Oracle Database 11g Release 2 (11.2.0.3.0) RAC On Oracle Linux 6.1 Using VirtualBox" as a basis, just ignoring the parts about the second server and RAC-specific network issues. All was going well until I got to the configuration of the udev rules. For me, the 'scsi_id' commands return nothing. When I first hit it I thought "wait ... he connected them as SATA, not SCSI." So I recreated the disks as SCSI (and using the VBox "Setting" GUI instead of the VboxManage utility, this time around.

From the top down, here's where I am at ...
Host os - Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit, 8 gb memory, 500gb hd.
Virtual Box 4.1.14
Guest OS - Oracle Linux 5.7 64bit UEK
After building the base OS and adding the Guest Additions and the oracle-validated package, I used the VBox Options tab - storage, to add a SCSI controller to the machine, then added 4 ea 4gb disks on that controller; started the machine, logged on as root, ran fdisk to create the partitions. Up to this point everything was looking good. Then I ran

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[root@vblnxsrv01 ~]# /sbin/scsi_id -g -u -d /dev/sdb
[root@vblnxsrv01 ~]#


and got nothing.

So, I've tried it two different ways - first using the VBoxManage commands exactly as given in the posting, second creating SCSI disks with the VBox "Settings" panel. How should i proceed to complete this setup?

[Tim...]

Hi.

You should really use the article for OL 5.x

http://www.oracle-base.com/articles/11g ... ualbox.php

The UDEV rules are different for OL5 and OL6. You can see the differences in the setup here.

http://www.oracle-base.com/articles/lin ... -and-6.php

Cheers

Tim...

[edstevens]

I guess there's something about this that I'm just not understanding. After reviewing the doc for doing this with OL 5 and the doc on the udev rules I still don't see what I'm doing differently. So I cleaned up the extra disks from my vm (cleaned them out of the vbox registry), then went back to the host command prompt, and picked up with the Linux 5 version of the instructions, at the 'VBoxManage createhd' commands. Created 4 hds, with files named asm1 through asm4. Followed on through until branched off to the UDEV instructions. This time the scsi_id command yielded the expected results, so I saved them for copy/paste when writing the rules file. Continued on through testing the rules and everything was looking good until I tested the second rule - the one that should have produced /dev/asm_disk2.

[Tim...]

Hi.

Not sure what to say. I've done this numerous times.

The latest OL patches altered the way scsi_id works, so I changed the articles to reflect this, getting the ID of the parent device (the disk) not the partition devices. The scsi_id command is different between OL5 and OL6, so make sure you are following the correct instructions.

It seems odd to me that your first disk works, but the others do not. Kinda implies that you have messed up somewhere.

Can you post the output of the scsi_id command for each disc, and the contents of your rules file?

Cheers

Tim...

[edstevens]

Tim,

Thanks for sticking with me on this. I finally figured it out.

When your example rules file said "PROGRAM=="/sbin/scsi_id -g -u -s /block/$parent" I thought the '$parent' was a place holder to be replaced with the actual value used when scsi_id was used at the command line to get the value for the RESULT parameter, so my original rules looked like this:

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[root@vblnxsrv01 rules.d]# cat /etc/udev/rules.d/99-oracle-asmdevices.rules
KERNEL=="sd?1", BUS=="scsi", PROGRAM=="/sbin/scsi_id -g -u -s /block/sdb", RESULT=="SATA_VBOX_HARDDISK_VBf837b2a6-72dd4503_", NAME="asm-disk1", OWNER="oracle", GROUP="dba", MODE="0660"
KERNEL=="sd?1", BUS=="scsi", PROGRAM=="/sbin/scsi_id -g -u -s /block/sdc", RESULT=="SATA_VBOX_HARDDISK_VBa92d8252-2b886d52_", NAME="asm-disk2", OWNER="oracle", GROUP="dba", MODE="0660"
KERNEL=="sd?1", BUS=="scsi", PROGRAM=="/sbin/scsi_id -g -u -s /block/sdd", RESULT=="SATA_VBOX_HARDDISK_VB5b835d46-31f0efa4_", NAME="asm-disk3", OWNER="oracle", GROUP="dba", MODE="0660"
KERNEL=="sd?1", BUS=="scsi", PROGRAM=="/sbin/scsi_id -g -u -s /block/sde", RESULT=="SATA_VBOX_HARDDISK_VB6057029a-e7bb0864_", NAME="asm-disk4", OWNER="oracle", GROUP="dba", MODE="0660"
[root@vblnxsrv01 rules.d]#

When I went back and put the '$parent' in exactly as shown in your demo, everything worked.

Thanks again for a very helpful series of articles.

[Tim...]

Cool.

Cheers

Tim...