IBM AIX 7.3 – Common Problem 77 – 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

rootvg shows stale PPs after a disk failure or reboot.

Environment & Reproduction

Triggered by a failed hdisk in a mirrored rootvg or aborted syncvg.

Root Cause Analysis

One copy of the LV is out of sync; lsvg shows STALE partitions.

Quick Triage

Run lsvg -l rootvg and look at STALE PPs and lsvg -p rootvg disk state.

Step-by-Step Diagnosis

Use lspv hdiskN and lsvg -M rootvg to map the failed copy.

Solution – Primary Fix

Run syncvg -v rootvg to resync, or replace the disk with replacepv.

Solution – Alternative Approaches

Alternative: unmirrorvg rootvg hdiskN then mirrorvg after disk swap.

Verification & Acceptance Criteria

Verify with lsvg rootvg that STALE PPs is 0 and QUORUM is fine.

Rollback Plan

Keep a bosboot -ad /dev/ipldevice backup before mirror surgery.

Prevention & Hardening

Use errlogger and errpt -a to monitor disk errors proactively.

Related Errors & Cross-Refs

Related: bosboot failures or LVM_SA_QUORCLOSE entries in errpt.

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

IBM Docs: Managing rootvg mirroring and syncvg command reference.