IBM AIX 7.3 – Common Problem 68 – 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

aixmibd consumes 100% of one CPU; monitoring agent unstable on AIX 7.3.

Environment & Reproduction

Excessive SNMP walks from monitoring tool against large interface tables.

Root Cause Analysis

aixmibd thread blocked on long SNMP getnext over many vSCSI/FC adapters.

Quick Triage

Run ps -ef | grep aixmibd and topas to confirm CPU consumer.

Step-by-Step Diagnosis

Use truss -p briefly to inspect aixmibd syscalls.

Solution – Primary Fix

Tune /etc/snmpdv3.conf community ACLs and limit polling interval.

Solution – Alternative Approaches

Restart snmp with stopsrc -s snmpd; startsrc -s snmpd as short-term reset.

Verification & Acceptance Criteria

aixmibd CPU usage stays <5% under normal polling.

Rollback Plan

Revert snmpdv3.conf from backup and restart snmpd.

Prevention & Hardening

Use targeted OIDs and avoid full mib walks.

Related Errors & Cross-Refs

snmpd timeouts, aixmibd core dumps.

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 SNMP daemon and aixmibd documentation.