Adding a voting disk online fails

This happened on a RHEL4/Ora10gR2 Ver. 10.2.0.1.0.
In a cluster environment it is important to keep RAC availability at maximum and avoid unnecessary either planned or unplanned down times. That is why the online commands and functionality are for.

When attempting to add a Voting disk to my RAC configuration an error, "Cluster is not in a ready state for online disk addition" after issuing this command:

$ sudo /u01/crs1020/bin/crsctl add css votedisk /dev/raw/raw8

It was not possible to perform this task, even though the manual states it is possible, after a bit of research in metalink I found this metalink note:"ADDING VOTING DISK ONLINE CRASH THE CRS" This is due to the bug 4898020 and the platforms affected are, so far, Linux at the 10.2.0.1.0 release, One more reason to keep updated with the latest patchset available.The only workaround for this is to shutdown the crs and retry the operation with the force flag

So in my case the complete procedure to perform this task that could have been directly performed online was:

1. Stop all application processes

$ /u01/crs1020/bin/srvctl stop nodeapps -n eg7910
$ /u01/crs1020/bin/srvctl stop nodeapps -n eg7909

2. Verify services were down

$ /u01/crs1020/bin/crs_stat -t
Name Type Target State Host
------------------------------------------------------------
ora....H1.inst application OFFLINE OFFLINE
ora....H2.inst application OFFLINE OFFLINE
ora.RDBHRH.db application OFFLINE OFFLINE
ora....SM1.asm application OFFLINE OFFLINE
ora....09.lsnr application OFFLINE OFFLINE
ora.eg7909.gsd application OFFLINE OFFLINE
ora.eg7909.ons application OFFLINE OFFLINE
ora.eg7909.vip application OFFLINE OFFLINE
ora....SM2.asm application OFFLINE OFFLINE
ora....10.lsnr application OFFLINE OFFLINE
ora.eg7910.gsd application OFFLINE OFFLINE
ora.eg7910.ons application OFFLINE OFFLINE
ora.eg7910.vip application OFFLINE OFFLINE

3. Stop CRS on both nodes

$ sudo /u01/crs1020/bin/crsctl stop crs
Stopping resources.
Successfully stopped CRS resources
Stopping CSSD.
Shutting down CSS daemon.
Shutdown request successfully issued.

$ ssh eg7910 sudo /u01/crs1020/bin/crsctl stop crs
Stopping resources.
Successfully stopped CRS resources
Stopping CSSD.
Shutting down CSS daemon.
Shutdown request successfully issued.

4. Add the votedisks with the force flag.

$ sudo /u01/crs1020/bin/crsctl add css votedisk /dev/raw/raw8 -force
Now formatting voting disk: /dev/raw/raw8
successful addition of votedisk /dev/raw/raw8.

$ sudo /u01/crs1020/bin/crsctl add css votedisk /dev/raw/raw9 -force
Now formatting voting disk: /dev/raw/raw9
successful addition of votedisk /dev/raw/raw9.

5. Verify the voting disks were added

$ /u01/crs1020/bin/crsctl query css votedisk
0. 0 /dev/raw/raw7
1. 0 /dev/raw/raw8
2. 0 /dev/raw/raw9
located 3 votedisk(s).

6. Restart CRS and applications.

$ sudo /u01/crs1020/bin/crsctl start crs
Attempting to start CRS stack
The CRS stack will be started shortly
$ ssh eg7910 sudo /u01/crs1020/bin/crsctl start crs
Attempting to start CRS stack
The CRS stack will be started shortly

This should have happened on line, and this could mean a momentarily loss of RAC availability.