mpath_prio_alua8

Usage

Overview

mpath_prio_alua is used as a priority callout for the multipath command. It returns a number that is used by multipath to group devices with the same priority together.

Options

-d directory

target directory for devices given as relative device names or devices given as major:minor
number. Default is "/dev".

-h

displays the command line help.

-v

turns on verbose output. This shows all results in human readable format. This includes information about the port group the device is in and its current state.

-V

shows the version number and exits.

device

specifies the device to query (the device must be a SCSI device that supports the “Report Target Port Groups” command). One of the following three formats may be used:

•

The full path name that starts with '/' (e.g. /dev/sda).

•

The device name only. This will prefix the directory name given by the -d option (e.g. sda).

•

The major and minor number of the device separated by ':'. This will create a temporary device node in the device directory (e.g. 8:0). The temporary name will be “tmpdev-<major>:<minor>-<pid>”.

Return value

The mpath_prio_alua command returns the following values:

0

on success. In this case the priority for the device is printed to stdout. The priority value is:

50

for devices that are in the active, optimized group

10

for devices that are in an active but non-optimized group

1

for devices that are in the standby group

0

for all other groups

The reason for the widely spaced priority values is the way multipath handles them. It will multiply the number of paths in a group with the priority value and select the group with the highest result. Thus, if there are six paths in the active, non-optimized group and only one in the active, optimized one, the non-optimized group would be used.

1

Indicates an error parsing the command line.

2

The given devices could not be opened for reading.

3

The device does not support target port groups.

4

The inquiry command did not return a target port group for the given device.

5

The report target port group command failed or did not return a target port group that was obtained from the inquiry command.

Examples

This example queries a device directly and returns the priority string:

Now the major and minor number is used to specify the device and verbose output is selected:

The following example shows the entries in the devices section of the multipath-tool configuration file (/etc/multipath.conf) to support an IBM DS6000 storage system:

Notes:

•

Depending on your default configuration not all keywords are required (e.g. if your path_checker is set to tur you don't have to use the path_checker statement in the device section).

•

The entries for vendor and product must be strings that are 8 characters long (for vendor) and 16 characters long (for product). The strings have to be padded with blanks if necessary.

•

If you are working with hotpluggable devices whose device nodes are created by udev you should use the %d flag in the prio_callout statement. This is because a short time elapses between the devices being available and udev creating the device nodes.

•

If under certain circumstances your storage subsystem temporarily reports failures on all paths, you should use the features statement showed in the example. This will configure the multipath volume to requeue I/O until a path becomes available again, instead of reporting failures in that case.