Using Raw I/O with Sybase Setup Steps

1. Select a shared disk partition of appropriate size for the Sybase ASE database device.

2. Bind an unused raw device node to this partition. Since this needs to be done every time the machine is rebooted, and requires root access, you may want to add the raw bindings to a system initialization file (i.e. rc.local or boot.local). These bindings must be removed from the file once the hierarchy is under LifeKeeper protection. LifeKeeper will re-establish the raw bindings for raw I/O devices that are under LifeKeeper protection. Use the command raw –qa to see which raw device nodes are already in use. For example:

# raw –qa

# raw /dev/raw/raw1 /dev/sda1

3. Set global read permissions on both the raw device controller (/dev/rawctl or /dev/raw/rawctl), and the disk partition on all servers that will protect the database instance.

# chmod a+r /dev/rawctl (or chmod a+r /dev/raw/rawctl)

4. Set group and user read/write permissions on the raw device on all servers that will protect the database instance.

# chmod 664 /dev/raw/raw1

5. Change the owner of the raw device to the Sybase ASE owner for the given database instance on all servers that will protect the database instance.

# chown –R sybase:sybase /dev/raw/raw1

6. Refer to the Installation Guide Adaptive Server for Linux for information on adding the raw device to the database server(s).