IBM AIX 7.3 – Common Problem 010 – 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

Users cannot login via SSH; secldapclntd not responding to lookups.

Environment & Reproduction

IBM AIX 7.3 LPAR exhibiting user authentication / LDAP issues under standard PowerVM workloads.

lssrc -s secldapclntd
ls-secldapclntd

Root Cause Analysis

secldapclntd daemon crashed or LDAP server reachable but binddn credentials rejected.

Quick Triage

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

lssrc -s secldapclntd
lsuser -R LDAP ALL

Step-by-Step Diagnosis

Check secldapclntd status and test ldap_dump connectivity.

ls-secldapclntd
lsuser -R LDAP joe

Solution – Primary Fix

Restart secldapclntd after correcting /etc/security/ldap/ldap.cfg.

stopsrc -s secldapclntd
startsrc -s secldapclntd

Solution – Alternative Approaches

Fail back to local files registry by setting SYSTEM=compat in /etc/security/user.

Verification & Acceptance Criteria

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

lsuser -R LDAP joe
ls-secldapclntd

Rollback Plan

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

chsec -f /etc/security/user -s default -a SYSTEM=compat

Prevention & Hardening

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

smit ldap  # version-pin LDAP client filesets

Related Errors & Cross-Refs

errpt LABEL=SECLDAP; bind failures

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 LDAP client configuration guide