RHEL Server using Powerpath won't boot » cyberfella ltd, since 2012.

If you have a Red Hat Enterprise Linux server with the emc Powerpath driver installed, and find it won’t boot due to the LVM subsystem not being able to find the volume group, it may be because the Powerpath driver hasn’t finished loading and scanning for block storage before the LVM subsystem has started. There are two ways around it, one if to set the dump and fsck order numbers in /etc/fstab to 0 and 0 respectively, but that means the filesystem will never be checked for errors during boot time. The other is the correct way around it, as recommended by emc in the Powerpath guide, and involves using the _netdev option in the /etc/fstab file so that the OS know to give it some time. It works too!

Use the _netdev option in /etc/fstab instead of defaults

Use a higher number than 1 for the fsck check order too.

The emc Powerpath guide states…

For RHEL 5, PowerPath devices should be mounted with the _netdev
option instead of the defaults option in the /etc/fstab file. This will
ensure that fsck is run later in the boot sequence.

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