Adding a PCI hot plug adapter

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You can add a PCI hot plug adapter into an available slot in the system unit and make new resources available to the operating system and applications without having to reboot the operating system. The adapter can be another adapter type that is currently installed or it can be a different adapter type.

The following are the procedures for adding a new PCI hot plug adapter.

Attention: Before you attempt to add PCI hot plug adapters, refer to the PCI Adapter Placement Reference, shipped with system units that support hot plug, to determine whether your adapter can be hot plugged. Refer to your system unit documentation for instructions for installing or removing adapters.

Adding a new PCI hot plug adapter involves the following tasks:

  • Finding and identifying an available slot in the machine
  • Preparing the slot for configuring the adapter
  • Installing the device driver, if necessary
  • Configuring the new adapter

You can use SMIT or system commands. To perform these tasks, you must log in as root user.

Note: When you add a hot plug adapter to the system, that adapter and its child devices might not be available for specification as a boot device using the bootlist command. You might be required to reboot your system to make all potential boot devices known to the operating system.

SMIT fastpath procedure

  1. Type smit devdrpci at the system prompt, then press Enter.
  2. Use the SMIT dialogs to complete the task.

To obtain additional information for completing the task, you can select the F1 Help key in the SMIT dialogs.

Commands procedure

You can use the following commands to display information about PCI hot plug slots and connected devices and to add a PCI hot plug adapter:

  • The lsslot command displays a list of all the hot plug slots and their characteristics.
  • The lsdev command displays the current state of all the devices installed in your system.
  • The drslot command prepares a hot plug slot for adding or removing a hot plug adapter.