Dell POWERVAULT MD3600I - Manual (Page 178)

Add A New Partition To Device Mapper
The kpartx command adds the new fdisk partition to the Device Mapper list of usable partitions. See examples below,
where mpath is the device node on which the partition was created.
# kpartx –a /dev/mapper/mpath
If successful, the command does not display an output. To verify success and view exact partition naming, you can use
these commands to see the full partition names assigned.
# cd /dev/mapper# ls
The following are some examples of the general mapping formats:
• On Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) hosts, a partition node has the format:/dev/mapper/mpathp
Where is the alphabetic number for the multipathing device, is the partition number for this device.
• On SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 11.x hosts, a partition node has the format:/dev/mapper/mpath-
part
Where is letter(s) assigned to the multipathing device and is the partition number.
• On SLES 10.3 hosts, a partition node has the format: /dev/mapper/mpath_part
Where is the letter(s) assigned to the multipathing device and is the partition number.
NOTE: After creating a partition on a device capable of multipathing, all I/O operations, including file system
creation, raw I/O and file system I/O, must be done through the partition node, and not through the multipathing
device nodes.
Create A File System On A Device Mapper Partition
Use the standard mkfs command to create the file system on the newly created Device Mapper partition.
For example:
# mkfs –t /dev/mapper/
where is the partition on which the file system is created.
Mount A Device Mapper Partition
Use the standard mount command to mount the Device Mapper partition, as shown below:
# mount /dev/mapper/
Ready For Use
The newly created virtual disks created on the MD Series storage array are now setup and ready to be used. Future
reboots automatically find multipathing devices along with their partitions.
NOTE: To ensure data integrity protection, reboot a Linux host server attached to an MD Series storage array using
the procedure given below.
Linux Host Server Reboot Best Practices
Its is recommended that you follow the procedures given below when you reboot your Linux host server using Device
Mapper multipathing with an MD Series storage array.
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