Solved: How to scan new LUNs in Redhat Linux

In this post  we will discuss how to scan new LUNs allocated by storage team to a Redhat Linux system.

There are two ways of scanning the LUNs

Method 1:-

Find how many SCSI bus controllers you have

• Go to directory /sys/class/scsi_host/  and list it’s contents.

cd /sys/class/scsi_host/ 

[root@scsi_host]# ls
host0 host1 host2
[root@scsi_host]#

• Here we can see we have three SCSI bus controllers. So in below command replace hostX with these directory names.

Run the Command ,

echo "- - -" > /sys/class/scsi_host/hostX/scan

e.g. 

[root@cloudvedas]# echo "- - -" > /sys/class/scsi_host/host0/scan
[root@cloudvedas]# echo "- - -" > /sys/class/scsi_host/host1/scan
[root@cloudvedas]# echo "- - -" > /sys/class/scsi_host/host2/scan
[root@cloudvedas]# echo "- - -" > /sys/class/scsi_host/host3/scan

TIP:- Here the “- – -” denotes CxTxDx i.e. Channel(controller) , Target ID and Disk or LUN number. This is asked in Linux Admin Interviews also.

• Repeat the above step for all three directories.

If you have FC HBA in the system you can follow the steps as below:-

• First check number of FC controllers in your system

#ls /sys/class/fc_host
host0 host1 host2

• To scan FC LUNs execute commands as

echo "1" > /sys/class/fc_host/host0/issue_lip
echo "1" > /sys/class/fc_host/host1/issue_lip
echo "1" > /sys/class/fc_host/host2/issue_lip

Tip :- Here echo “1” operation performs a Loop Initialization Protocol (LIP) and then scans the interconnect and causes the SCSI layer to be updated to reflect the devices currently on the bus. A LIP is, essentially, a bus reset,  and will cause device addition and removal. This procedure is necessary to configure a new SCSI target on a Fibre Channel interconnect. Bear in mind that issue_lip is an asynchronous operation.

• Verify if the new disk is visible now

fdisk -l |egrep '^Disk' |egrep -v 'dm-'

Method 2 :-

• Next method is to scan using SG3 utility. You can install it using

yum install sg3_utils

• Once installed  run the command

/usr/bin/rescan-scsi-bus.sh