IBM AIX 7.3 – Common Problem 006 – Diagnosis and Fix

📖 ~1 min read

Table of contents

1. Symptom & Impact
2. Environment & Reproduction
3. Root Cause Analysis
4. Quick Triage
5. Step-by-Step Diagnosis
6. Solution – Primary Fix
7. Solution – Alternative Approaches
8. Verification & Acceptance Criteria
9. Rollback Plan
10. Prevention & Hardening
11. Related Errors & Cross-Refs
12. References & Further Reading

Symptom & Impact

lsvg -l shows stale partitions after a disk path failure on rootvg mirror.

Environment & Reproduction

IBM AIX 7.3 LPAR exhibiting LVM mirror stale / syncvg issues under standard PowerVM workloads.

lsvg rootvg
lsvg -p rootvg

Root Cause Analysis

Transient disk path outage leaves logical partitions out of sync with their mirror copy.

Quick Triage

Confirm scope with errpt, recent changes, and subsystem state via lssrc.

lspv
lsvg -l rootvg

Step-by-Step Diagnosis

Identify stale LVs and confirm both PVs are accessible.

lsvg -l rootvg | grep stale
lsmpio -l hdisk0

Solution – Primary Fix

Resynchronise stale partitions with syncvg.

syncvg -v rootvg

Solution – Alternative Approaches

If a mirror copy is permanently lost, rmlvcopy and rebuild after disk replacement.

Verification & Acceptance Criteria

Confirm subsystem returns to RUNNING state and errpt shows no new entries.

lsvg -l rootvg
lspv -l hdisk0

Rollback Plan

Restore prior configuration from mksysb or alt_disk_install clone if the fix regresses.

rmlvcopy hd2 1 hdisk1  # remove broken copy

Prevention & Hardening

Encode the fix in NIM customisation scripts and monitor via topas/nmon.

smit syncvg  # schedule weekly syncvg check

Related Errors & Cross-Refs

errpt LABEL=LVM_SA_STALEPP; mirror health

Related tutorial: View the step-by-step tutorial for aix-7.3.

View all aix-7.3 tutorials on the Tutorials Hub →

Browse all common problems & solutions on the Tutorials Hub.

References & Further Reading

AIX LVM syncvg and mirrorvg documentation