Richmond Cluster (09)
Richmond Cluster (08)
Richmond Cluster (10)

Sunday 04 May, 2008 - 21:59

Searching MetaLink .

Found How to Add CSS Voting Disk Mirrors on Linux Using Shared Raw Partitions (Doc.Id: 329734.1) says: To set them up as raw devices, with permissions 600 and ownership assigned to oracle:dba,.... This contradicts the Oracle Database Oracle Clusterware and Oracle Real Application Clusters Installation Guide (pp.3-15 to 3-16):

For the raw device that you created for the Oracle Cluster Registry (OCR), enter commands similar to the following to set the owner, group, and permissions on the device file:

# chown root:oinstall /dev/raw/rawn
# chmod 640 /dev/raw/rawn

By making the oinstall group the owner of the OCR, this permits the OCR to be read by multiple Oracle homes, including those with different OSDBA groups.

In the installer log ( $ORACLE_BASE/oraInventory/logs ), the following messages are found:

PathName = /dev/raw/raw1
INFO: Query Returned: 0
SEVERE: The specified shared raw partition /dev/raw/raw1 may not have correct permission. Verify that the partition is owned by Oracle User.

Changed the ownership of the ocr devices on richmond1 :
$ su -
# chown oracle:oinstall /dev/raw/raw1 /dev/raw/raw16
# ls -l /dev/raw/raw1 /dev/raw/raw16
crw-r----- 1 oracle oinstall 162, 1 Jun 25 2004 /dev/raw/raw1
crw-r----- 1 oracle oinstall 162, 16 Jun 25 2004 /dev/raw/raw16

This did not solve the problem.

According to 5.10 Raw Devices on Oracle Enterprise Linux and Red Hat Enterprise Linux in the release notes, the settings should be:
# OCR
chown root:oinstall /dev/raw/raw1
chown root:oinstall /dev/raw/raw2
chmod 660 /dev/raw/raw1
chmod 660 /dev/raw/raw2
# Voting Disks
chown oracle:oinstall /dev/raw/raw3
chown oracle:oinstall /dev/raw/raw4
chown oracle:oinstall /dev/raw/raw5
chmod 644 /dev/raw/raw3
chmod 644 /dev/raw/raw4
chmod 644 /dev/raw/raw5

According to Pro Oracle Database 10g Rac on Linux: Installation, Administration, and Performance (p.286), I should be doing:
# chown root:oinstall /dev/raw/raw1
# chmod 660 /dev/raw/raw1

This matches the release notes with respect to the OCR files.

Still get the same error.

I changed /etc/sysconfig/rawdevices to use the block device name instead of the device major and minor numbers. Restart the rawdevices service. Still get the same error.

Rebooted both richmond1 and richmond2 . (When the rational fails, use the irrational.) Permissions are the same as before: crw-rw---- oracle oinstall . Now the installer accepts these as OCR files, but fails to accept the voting disks! (permission is crw-rw-r-- oracle oinstall )

Rebooted richmond1 . Still get the same problem with the voting disks. Made the same changes on richmond2 and rebooted.
$ su -
# chown oracle:oinstall /dev/raw/raw1 /dev/raw/raw2 /dev/raw/raw16 /dev/raw/raw17 /dev/raw/raw31 /dev/raw/raw32
# chmod 660 /dev/raw/raw1 /dev/raw/raw16 /dev/raw/raw31
# chmod 664 /dev/raw/raw2 /dev/raw/raw17 /dev/raw/raw32
# vi /etc/sysconfig/rawdevices (change to block device names)
# reboot

The error message in the log is:

PathName = /dev/raw/raw2
INFO: Query Returned: 0
SEVERE: The specified shared raw partition /dev/raw/raw2 may not have correct permission. Verify that the partition is owned by Oracle User.

# ls -l /dev/raw/raw2
crw-rw-r-- 1 oracle oinstall 162, 2 Jun 25 2004 /dev/raw/raw2

And people wonder why computer people get paid so much! The instructions are wrong, the error messages are brief, and the experts got lucky.