Failure to boot into runlevel 5/GUI when OS is installed on iSCSI multipath LUN

This document (000019689) is provided subject to the disclaimer at the end of this document.

Environment

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP2

Situation

On a system with Qlogic FastLinQ QL41000 controller with two ports configured to connect to same iSCSI volume and multipath activated, the OS may fail to boot into GUI mode if the cable is disconnected from one of the ports.

Scenario that leads to failure to boot into GUI mode is:

1. Both ports have cable connected
2. During OS installation, multipath is activated and OS is installed on multipath device
3. OS install completes, user boots into GUI mode successfully.
4. Cable is disconnected from one of the ports
5. Reboot the OS and observe that OS fails to boot into GUI mode.

Device details:

af:00.6 Mass storage controller: QLogic Corp. FastLinQ QL41000 Series 10/25/40/50GbE Controller (iSCSI) (rev 02)

#lspci -s af:00.6 -n
af:00.6 0180: 1077:8084 (rev 02)

Resolution

The workaround for this problem is as follows:

After step 3 (the installation completed and system booted into the GUI),
add "no_path_retry queue" and "fast_io_fail 20"
to /etc/multipath.conf under the default section.

Rebuild the initramfs ("drafut -f"), before proceeding to step 4.

Disclaimer

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