This chapter provides information about performing tasks that are associated with Solaris Volume Manager soft partitions. For conceptual information regarding soft partitions, see Chapter 12, Soft Partitions (Overview). The following task map identifies the procedures that are needed to manage Solaris Volume Manager soft partitions. Task Description For Instructions Create soft partitions Use the Solaris Volume Manager GUI or the metainit command to create soft partitions. How to Create a Soft Partition Check the status of soft partitions Use the Solaris Volume Manager GUI or the metastat command to check the status of soft partitions. How to Check the Status of a Soft Partition Expand soft partitions Use the Solaris Volume Manager GUI or the metattach command to expand soft partitions. How to Expand a Soft Partition Remove soft partitions Use the Solaris Volume Manager GUI or the metaclear command to remove soft partitions. How to Remove a Soft Partition Check the Configuration Guidelines for Soft Partitions. Use one of the following methods to create a soft partition:From the Enhanced Storage tool within the Solaris Management Console, open the Volumes node. Choose Action⇒Create Volume. Then, follow the instructions in the wizard. For more information, see the online help. To create a soft partition, use the following form of the metainit command:# metainit [-s diskset] soft-partition -p [-e] component sizesdisksetSpecifies which disk set is being used. If -s is not specified, the local (default) disk set is used. pSpecifies that a soft partition be configured. eSpecifies that the entire disk should be reformatted. Formatting the disk provides a slice 0, which takes most of the disk. Formatting the disk also provides a slice 7 of a minimum of 4 Mbytes in size. Slice 7 contains a state database replica. soft-partitionSpecifies the name of the soft partition. The name is of the form dnnn, where nnn is a number in a range between 0 and 8192. componentSpecifies the disk, slice, or logical volume from which to create the soft partition. All existing data on the component is destroyed because the soft partition headers are written at the beginning of the component. sizeSpecifies the size of the soft partition. The size is specified as a number followed by one of the following:M or m for megabytes G or g for gigabytes T or t for terabytes B or b for blocks (sectors) See the following examples and the metainit1M man page for more information. In the following example, a 4-Gbyte soft partition called d20 is created on c1t3d0s2.# metainit d20 -p c1t3d0s2 4g The following example creates a soft partition and formats disk c1t2d0. This action destroys any data on that disk and creates a new soft partition on slice 0.# metainit d7 -p -e c1t2d0 1G Maintaining soft partitions is no different from maintaining other logical volumes.Read the Configuration Guidelines for Soft Partitions. Use one of the following methods to check the status of a soft partition:From the Enhanced Storage tool within the Solaris Management Console, open the Volumes node. Choose the soft partition that you want to monitor. Then, choose Action⇒Properties. Follow the onscreen instructions . For more information, see the online help. To view the existing configuration, use the following form of the metastat command:# metastat soft-partitionsoft-partitionSpecifies the name of the partition you want to check. In the following example, the status of soft partition d1 is checked. This soft partition includes two extents and is built on the RAID-1 volume d100.# metastat d1 d1: soft partition component: d100 state: OKAY size: 42674285 blocks Extent Start Block Block Count 0 10234 40674285 1 89377263 2000000 d100: Mirror Submirror 0: d10 State: OKAY Read option: roundrobin (default) Write option: parallel (default) Size: 426742857 blocks d10: Submirror of d100 State: OKAY Hot spare pool: hsp002 Size: 426742857 blocks Stripe 0: (interlace: 32 blocks) Device Start Block Dbase State Hot Spare c3t3d0s0 0 No Okay When no other logical volumes have been built on a soft partition, you can add space to the soft partition. Free space is located and used to extend the partition. Existing data is not moved. If a soft partition has been used to create another volume (for example, if it is a component of a RAID-0 volume), the soft partition cannot be expanded. In most cases, the same objective (providing more space for the device that contains the soft partition) can be achieved by concatenating other volumes onto the containing device. See Expanding Storage Capacity for more information. Read the Configuration Guidelines for Soft Partitions. Use one of the following methods to expand a soft partition:From the Enhanced Storage tool within the Solaris Management Console, open the Volumes node. Choose the soft partition that you want to expand, then choose Action⇒Properties. Follow the onscreen instructions. For more information, see the online help. To add space to a soft partition, use the following form of the metattach command:# metattach [-s diskset] soft-partition sizedisksetSpecifies the name of the disk set in which the soft partition exists. soft-partitionSpecifies the name of an existing soft partition. sizeSpecifies the amount of storage space to add. The following example shows how to attach space to a soft partition. The file system is then expanded using the growfs command while the soft partition is online and mounted.# mount /dev/md/dsk/d20 /home2 # metattach d20 10g # growfs -M /home2 /dev/md/rdsk/d20For more information on the growfs command, see Expanding a File System Using the growfs Command. Read the Configuration Guidelines for Soft Partitions. Use one of the following methods to delete a soft partition:From the Enhanced Storage tool within the Solaris Management Console, open the Volumes node. Choose the soft partition that you want to delete. Then choose Action⇒Properties. Follow the onscreen instructions. For more information, see the online help. To delete a soft partition, use one of the following forms of the metaclear command:# metaclear [-s diskset] component # metaclear [-s diskset] -r soft-partition # metaclear [-s diskset] -p componentdisksetSpecifies the disk set in which the soft partition exists. soft-partitionSpecifies the soft partition to delete. rSpecifies to recursively delete logical volumes, but not volumes on which others depend. pSpecifies to purge all soft partitions on the specified component, except those soft partitions that are open. componentSpecifies the component from which to clear all of the soft partitions. This example shows how to delete all soft partitions on c1t4d2s0.# metaclear -p c1t4d2s0