[Oracleasm-users] ASMLib disks not recognized as valid during CREATE DISKGROUP

[John Smiley]

I have installed ASMLib for UL1.0 SP3 and RHAS 2.1
with kernel and glibc errata on separate machines.  In
each case, I created ASM disks using
/etc/init.d/oracleasm createdisk and verified with
listdisks and querydisk.  When I attempt to create the
ASM instance and create a disk group, the disks are
not visible,  I verified that the search path was
/dev/oracleasm/disks/*

Each of the disks are whole disk partitions
(/dev/hdc1, /dev/sdb1, etc), yet nothing I do allows
me to create the diskgroups.

I used dbca to create an ASM instance and then
manually tried to create diskgroups with the follwing
command:

SQL> l
  1  create diskgroup dgroup1 external redundancy
  2* disk '/dev/oracleasm/disks/*'
SQL> /
create diskgroup dgroup1 external redundancy
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-15018: diskgroup cannot be created
ORA-15031: disk specification '/dev/oracleasm/disks/*'
matches no disks
ORA-15025: could not open disk
'/dev/oracleasm/disks/disk2'
ORA-15059: invalid device type for ASM disk
Linux Error: 24576: Unknown system error
Additional information: 42
Additional information: -1073838048
ORA-15025: could not open disk
'/dev/oracleasm/disks/disk1'
ORA-15059: invalid device type for ASM disk
Linux Error: 24576: Unknown system error
Additional information: 42
Additional information: -1073838048

The disks appear to be valid:

[root at rac1 root]# /etc/init.d/oracleasm status
Checking if ASM is loaded:                            
    [  OK  ]
Checking if /dev/oracleasm is mounted:                
    [  OK  ]


[root at rac1 root]# /etc/init.d/oracleasm listdisks
disk1
disk2

[root at rac1 root]# /etc/init.d/oracleasm querydisk
/dev/oracleasm/disks/disk1
Disk "/dev/oracleasm/disks/disk1" is marked an ASM
disk
[root at rac1 root]# /etc/init.d/oracleasm querydisk
/dev/oracleasm/disks/disk2
Disk "/dev/oracleasm/disks/disk2" is marked an ASM
disk


Here is a listing of /dev/oracleasm:

[root at rac1 root]# ls -lR /dev/oracleasm
/dev/oracleasm:
total 0
drwxr-xr-x    1 root     root            0 Feb 12
11:34 disks
drwxrwx---    1 oracle   dba             0 Feb 12
11:34 iid

/dev/oracleasm/disks:
total 0
brw-rw----    1 oracle   dba        8,  17 Feb 12
11:34 disk1
brw-rw----    1 oracle   dba        8,  33 Feb 12
11:34 disk2

/dev/oracleasm/iid:
total 0

The alert log shows this:

Starting up ORACLE RDBMS Version: 10.1.0.2.0.
System parameters with non-default values:
  large_pool_size          = 12582912
  instance_type            = asm
  remote_login_passwordfile= SHARED
  background_dump_dest     =
/u01/app/oracle/admin/+ASM/bdump
  user_dump_dest           =
/u01/app/oracle/admin/+ASM/udump
  core_dump_dest           =
/u01/app/oracle/admin/+ASM/cdump
  asm_diskstring           = /dev/oracleasm/disks/*
PMON started with pid=2, OS id=12997
MMAN started with pid=3, OS id=12999
DBW0 started with pid=4, OS id=13001
LGWR started with pid=5, OS id=13003
CKPT started with pid=6, OS id=13005
SMON started with pid=7, OS id=13007
RBAL started with pid=8, OS id=13009
Wed Feb 11 22:34:27 2004
SQL> create diskgroup dgroup1 external redundancy
disk '/dev/oracleasm/disks/*'
Wed Feb 11 22:34:27 2004
Loaded ASM Library - Generic Linux, version 1.0.0
library for asmlib interface
Wed Feb 11 22:34:27 2004
ERROR: diskgroup DGROUP1 was not created
Wed Feb 11 22:34:58 2004
SQL> create diskgroup dgroup1 external redundancy
disk '/dev/oracleasm/disks/*'
Wed Feb 11 22:34:58 2004
ERROR: diskgroup DGROUP1 was not created
[oracle at rac1 bdump]$

If I abandon ASMLib and map the disks to raw devices,
everything works fine and I'm able to create the
diskgroup.

What am I doing wrong?

John Smiley
Sr. Database Architect
Sprint Corporation