Server hangs upon reboot, while discovering SAN disks return Not Ready (are in suspended SRDF state, for example)

Solution Verified - Updated -

Issue

  • system hangs on boot while discovering SAN disks
  • system hangs on boot if multipath disks are in Not Ready state
  • multipath errors being continually reported on console:

    device-mapper: create ioctl failed: Device or resource busy
    device-mapper: create ioctl failed: Device or resource busy
    device-mapper: create ioctl failed: Device or resource busy
    device-mapper: create ioctl failed: Device or resource busy
    device-mapper: create ioctl failed: Device or resource busy
    device-mapper: create ioctl failed: Device or resource busy
    
  • system hangs on boot if some attached SAN EMC SRDF configured R2 disks are in "suspended state"

  • suspended state is same as NR or "Not Ready" state of BCV configurations
  • system attached to R1 disks boots/behaves normally
  • system log ends at or shortly after "Setting hostname" from rc.sysinit script:

                         Welcome to Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server
                    Press 'I' to enter interactive startup.
    Setting clock  (utc): Wed Dec  2 16:38:12 EST 2009         [  OK  ]
    Starting udev:                                             [  OK  ]
    Starting udev:                                             [  OK  ]
    Loading default keymap (us):                               [  OK  ]
    Setting hostname host1:                                    [  OK  ]
    <system hangs>
    

Environment

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 4
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5
  • EMC storage configured with R1/R2 SRDF relationship and R2 state is "suspended" and systems attached to R2 attempting to boot
  • device-mapper-multipath

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