Following on from my previous post, on working with scalable VGs.   https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/cgaix/entry/working_with_aix_scalable_volume_groups1?lang=en   You may find yourself in a situation where you’d like to convert a VG to scalable.   For example, you might start off with a normal VG i.e. one that can support a maximum of 256 LVs and 32 PVs.   # mkvg -s 512M -y myvg hdisk5 myvg   # lsvg myvg VOLUME GROUP:        myvg                      VG IDENTIFIER:   00f6027300004c0000000133aa24d1f6 VG STATE:... [More]

Tags:  aix lvm pv chvg gibson convert -g mkvg manager scalable hdisk chris conversion group groups volume max vg lv physical logical

Ever wondered what process just core dumped? The AIX errpt command will tell you where the core file has been dumped and in most cases the program name: # errpt -a | head -45 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LABEL:          CORE_DUMP IDENTIFIER:     C69F5C9B Date/Time:       Wed Jul 22 13:41:52 EET 2009 Sequence Number: 2694 Machine Id:      00C01C704C00 Node Id:         hxaix14 Class:           S Type:            PERM Resource Name:   SYSPROC Description SOFTWARE PROGRAM ABNORMALLY TERMINATED Probable... [More]

Starting with HMC V8R8.1.0.1 there’s a new, enhanced HMC interface available. You are given the choice of using either the Classic or Enhanced interface when you login to the HMC.     If you select ‘ Enhanced ’ you may find that the traditional DLPAR menu ( Dynamic partitioning ) has seemingly disappeared!  You may be expecting the “classic” DLPAR menu, as shown in the following image.   CLASSIC DLPAR     You will not find the ‘ Dynamic partitioning ’ option or interface.... [More]

Tags:  power8 chris hmc v8r8.1.0.1 powervc aix gibson

When troubleshooting Fibre Channel adapter issues on AIX (or VIOS), I often use the fcstat command to assist me in the process. The command may display error numbers similar to the following:   $ fcstat fcs0   Error opening device: /dev/fscsi0 errno: 00000045   The error number (errno) displayed can (in some cases) be used to identify the root cause of a problem. In the example above, the error number is 45 . This number is in hex. If we convert this to decimal, the number is 69. Now, if we look for 69 in the /usr/include/errno.h... [More]

Tags:  fcstat errno gibson chris vios aix

Here’s a question I received recently, that relates to virtual SCSI hdisk path priority.   Hi, Chris, I use MPIO for our virtualization environment. I'd like to check which path is currently used. How can I get the result? For example:   [nim:/]# lspath Enabled hdisk0 vscsi0 Enabled hdisk0 vscsi1 Enabled hdisk2 vscsi2 Enabled hdisk1 vscsi1 Enabled hdisk1 vscsi0 Enabled hdisk3 vscsi2 Enabled hdisk2 vscsi3 Enabled hdisk3 vscsi3   How can I determine vscsi0 or vscsi1 is currently carrying data through VIOS and VIOC. Thanks a lot!   By default... [More]

Tags:  priority aix hdisk gibson vios vscsi chris

Here are some questions I received recently regarding VLAN tagging on the VIO server. My answers are shown in green .   “Hi Chris,   Q: I’m trying to understand when, where and why there would be the need to use ‘mkvdev –vlan (etc.) on the VIOS, and I’m wondering whether you would be able to clarify this for me, please.   Is it necessary to add the VLAN tag devices to the SEA, or is it suffice to just have them defined within the Virtual Ethernet itself which is part of the SEA?”   A: It is suffice to simply define the VLAN ids assigned... [More]

Tags:  ent6 tagging sea virt_adapters=ent3 power7 vlan hmc tag -attr ent5 mkvdev -dev -vlan chdev dlpar dynamic

Recently I had the pleasure of configuring a couple of POWER7 720s for a customer. Each 720 was to host roughly 12 LPARs each. There were two VIO servers and a NIM server per 720.   Everything went along nicely and according to plan. In a few days we had both systems built. My steps for building the systems were almost identical to those described by Rob McNelly in a recent post . All four VIO servers were running the latest VIOS code i.e. 2.2.0.10-FP-24 SP-01 . All the client LPARs were running AIX 6.1 TL6 SP3 . Each VIOS... [More]

Tags:  ds5020 aix vios

Here’s a nice little matrix of current VIOS levels and the corresponding AIX level.     The following link also has some fantastic information relating to NIM installation and backup of a Virtual I/O Server (VIOS). https://www-304.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=isg3T1011386 It has an official answer for one of the questions I’m asked the most: Q: Do I need to use an lpp_source to install the VIO server using NIM? A: No. All of the device drivers and software packages needed to install the VIO server are in the VIO server mksysb. I also... [More]

Tags:  nim vios aix

Everyone knows about the VIOS advisor (the vios_advisor utility), right?   https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/wikis/home?lang=en#!/wiki/Power%20Systems/page/VIOS%20Advisor   And most of us know that this functionality was officially included in a recent release of the VIOS (with the part command), right?   https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/blogs/cgaix/entry/the_new_vios_part_command?lang=en   But did you know that the VIOS advisor provides an extra panel of information that is not currently included with... [More]

Last month I applied the latest fix pack for VIOS 2.1 i.e. FP22, to one of our lab VIOS. I came across the following error while doing so:    Renaming Media Repository Logical Volume:   VMLibrary_LV --> VMLibrary umount: error unmounting /dev/VMLibrary_LV: Device busy   Media Repository failed to unmount. We cannot continue until it can be successfully unmounted. Please address and retry.   update:   Failed while executing the ios.cli.rte.post_u script.   installp:   The installation has FAILED for the "root" part         of... [More]

Just the other day, I needed to use the AIX splitvg command in order to copy some data from one system to another. I thought I’d share the experience here. The splitvg command can split a single mirror copy of a fully mirrored volume group into a separate “snapshot” volume group. From the man page: The original volume group VGname will stop using the disks that are now part of the snapshot volume group SnapVGname. Both volume groups will keep track of the writes within the volume group so that when the snapshot volume group is rejoined with the... [More]

Tags:  aix lvm

                                                                        We all know that nimadm and multibos don’t play well together (at least that’s the case right now). If... [More]

At the IBM Technical Symposium in Sydney last week, a person approached me to discuss NIM and some of its capabilities. During the conversation we discussed how NIM could be used to copy files from the NIM master to its NIM clients. I promised to send them some information on how to achieve this ASAP. They were smart and followed up with an email the next day! They’d even tried to configure this on their systems but hit a small problem.   "Hello Chris,   So trying to push out a new netbackup tar file to one of our nim... [More]

Tags:  resource files server copy master sync blog chris aix client gibson nim

You can use the chhwres command, on the HMC, to “free up” allocated processor and memory resources from your logical partitions.   I may want to do this if I need to improve the affinity placement of a partition on a POWER7 system or if I need to free up resources from trial capacity on demand in order to re-use the resources with On/Off capacity instead.   Here’s an example of “freeing up” some processor resources from a partition.   I’d like to remove the processor allocation from my AIX... [More]

I’ve received a couple of requests for an example of using a post migration script with nimadm . What follows is a simple example of using such a resource with NIM. If you are not familiar with the nimadm tool then perhaps you’d like to start first by reading my article on using nimadm to migrate to AIX 6.1.   The nimadm utility can perform both pre and post migration tasks. This is accomplished by running NIM scripts either before or after a migration. The tool accepts the following flags for pre and post migration script resources:  ... [More]

Tags:  script aix post-migration nim chris_gibson nimadm

Following on from my post on March 25 th regarding AIX Virtual Ethernet Link Status . It appears that the latest TL and SP for AIX 7.1 (TL3 SP3) allows an administrator to view the (VIOS SEA) physical link status from a virtual Ethernet adapter.   # oslevel -s 7100-03-03-1415 # chdev -l ent0 -a poll_uplink=yes –P # shutdown –Fr # entstat -d ent0 | grep PHY         PHYS_LINK_UP   Using sdiff I compared the output from entstat –d (before and after I applied TL3 SP3).  

When you upgrade PowerHA (formerly HACMP) don’t forget to check/update your TSM client as well!   We successfully upgraded from PowerHA 5.4 to PowerHA 6.1 SP6 first.   # halevel -s 6.1.0 SP6   We found that our DB2 backups to TSM were no longer working.   $ db2adutl query   Error: Initialize environment failed with TSM return code 4602   In the TSM error log file we also saw the following message repeated over and over:   # tail -1 dsmerror_db2_ha.log 10/17/11   12:42:57 ANS1478E CLUSTERNODE is set to YES but the cluster software is not... [More]

Tags:  ans1677w 6.1 5.4 powerha 4602 gibson aix return chris mailprog ans1478e tsm clusternode code hacmp

PowerHA 7.2.1 (June 2017) introduced the cl_ezupdate utility. You can use the cl_ezupdate command to update the software for the entire cluster or a subset of nodes in the cluster, often without disrupting workloads.   https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/en/SSPHQG_7.2.2/com.ibm.powerha.cmds/hacmpcmds_whatsnew.htm   You can use this tool to apply and reject updates for PowerHA service packs and technology levels and interim fixes. This process is performed on the entire cluster or on a specific subset of nodes in the cluster.... [More]

Tags:  aix cl_ezupdate 7.2.1 powerha

After updating my NIM master to AIX 7.1 TL2 SP1 (7100-02-01-1245), I noticed a problem. Whenever I installed a new AIX partition using NIM, the resources allocated to the NIM client were not being de-allocated, even though the installation was completing successfully. Also, if I tried to run my usual ‘NIM client reset’ script (below), the resources were still allocated.   #!/usr/bin/ksh # Reset a NIM client.   if [[ "$1" = "" ]] ; then   echo Please specify a NIM client to reset e.g. aixlpar1. else   if lsnim -l $1... [More]

Tags:  nim not working tl2 issue 7.1 chris_gibson aix resources de-allocate