IDS Down DBSpace / Chunk

Question

MustGather information for problems with down dbspaces/chunks. Gathering this information before calling IBM® support helps familiarize you with the troubleshooting process and saves you time.

Answer

Gathering general information

For IBM® Informix® products, gather the following information for any problem:

MustGather: General Information to collect for Informix Family product problems



Down DBSpace / Chunk information 

• Are the chunks stored in an external disk array cabinet (or similar hardware)?
• If more than one chunk has been marked down, are those chunks handled through the same disk controller? (onstat -d , although you may have to check the devices if using links)
• How many other instances exist on this machine? (onstat -g dis)
• Was a new chunk recently added to this instance? (oncheck -pr)
• If there are other instances on the same machine, were a chunk was recently added?
• Is there recent backup of the system? (onstat -g arc, oncheck -pr)
• Is it possible to dial into, or somehow connect to, the system?

Processes to run

Read the operating system man pages and IDS documentation for usage and other information about the following commands, if necessary. Run the following commands and collect the output:

• On UNIX or Linux: run ps -ef to collect a list of the currently running processes.
• On UNIX or Linux: run ls -lL to check whether the chunk exists and has the correct permissions. The permissions should be 660 and the owner/group should both be informix.
• On UNIX and Linux: If the chunk exists, run a dd command to see if any errors are reported or whether the chunk is accessible:
  dd if=chunk_path of=your_name bs=2k count=100 iseek=0
  Adjust "bs" to be the page size of the dbspace in question. Adjust iseek if there has been an offset used when the chunk was added. (The above information can be ontained from an onstat -d").

• Run oncheck -pr to gather detailed information about the IDS reserved pages. Some of the useful information from this report are:
  • "Page Size" from PAGE_PZERO
  • MSGPATH, DBSPACETEMP, DUMPDIR, onDBSPACEDOWN from PAGE_CONFIG".
• If the IDS engine is online, run onstat -d.
• If the IDS engine is online, run onstat -b.
• Run oninit -V to obtain the exact IDS version being run.
• On UNIX, run uname -a to obtain the O/S version. If running on AIX, also run oslevel -s.

Files to collect

This section lists files to collect which are normally (or optimally) analyzed for this problem.

• Any core files generated during the problem.
• If there is a core file generated, please also supply the binary that was running, which in most cases will be the oninit binary from $INFORMIXDIR/bin directory.
• The whole online.log or the relevant portion from the online.log if it is large.
• Any Assertion file that was reported at the time of the issue.
• Errors reported to the Front End application.
• The relevant hardware log from the machine.

Submitting information to IBM Support 

Once you have collected your information, you can begin Problem Determination through the product Support web page, or simply submit the diagnostic information to IBM support.

You can submit files using one of following methods to help speed problem diagnosis:

• IBM Support Assistant (ISA)
• Electronic Service Request (ESR)
• FTP to the Enhanced Customer Data Repository (ECuRep)

See the Related information article, Submitting diagnostic information to IBM Technical Support for problem determination

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21270737