Getting iSCSI devices to mount persistently using LVM on SLES 9

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Environment

SLES 9 SP3

Situation

Trying to get iSCSI devices using LVM to mount persistently after reboot.
Getting "probe failed, n retries remaining" where n is 9 down to 0.

Resolution

Please reference TID 10097545 for more details of setting up iSCSI.

LVM does not dynamically rescan when a new ISCSI device is presented to it. The default load order is to first bring up boot.lvm and then later bring up iSCSI. Thus we need to rescan LVM to make the data from the iSCSI device usable.

Make sure boot.lvm and iscsi start on bootup.
chkconfig boot.lvm on
chkconfig iscsi on

Create a /etc/fstab.iscsi file to mount the iscsi device's file system. This file uses the same fields as the normal fstab file. Below is an example volume group is "vg3" logical volume is "lv3".
/dev/mapper/vg3-lv3 /mnt/lv3 ext3 defaults 1 2

Make a empty directory for the mount point /mnt/lv3
mkdir /mnt/lv3

Modify the beginning of /sbin/iscsi-mountall to give a delay of 10 seconds so iscsi is completely connected, rescan using vgscan and then make it available again.

#! /bin/sh
#
# Mount iSCSI devices listed in /etc/fstab

#added by Novell technical support
sleep 10
vgscan
/sbin/lvchange -a n /dev/vg3/lv3
/sbin/lvchange -a y /dev/vg3/lv3
#end of addition by Novell technical support

BASEDIR=/
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