🔴 Critical   ⏱ 5–30 min  Last verified: 19 May 2026
Affected versions: IBM AIX 7.3

📖 ~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

LPAR fails to boot after frame firmware update; SMS menu reports rootvg disk missing.

Environment & Reproduction

IBM AIX 7.3 LPAR exhibiting LPAR boot failure / firmware issues under standard PowerVM workloads.

lsattr -El sys0
prtconf | head

Root Cause Analysis

Firmware level mismatch between HMC and managed system causes adapter re-enumeration.

Quick Triage

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

errpt | head
lsdev -Cc disk

Step-by-Step Diagnosis

Inspect errpt for boot path errors and confirm bootlist points to a valid hdisk.

errpt -a | head -100
bootlist -m normal -o
Illustrative mockup for aix-7.3 — aix73-b01-p001-diag
Diagnosis console for LPAR boot failure / firmware on IBM AIX 7.3 — Illustrative mockup — Progressive Robot

Solution – Primary Fix

Reset bootlist to the correct rootvg disk and reboot via HMC.

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bootlist -m normal hdisk0
shutdown -Fr
Illustrative mockup for aix-7.3 — aix73-b01-p001-fix
Remediation output for LPAR boot failure / firmware on IBM AIX 7.3 — Illustrative mockup — Progressive Robot

Solution – Alternative Approaches

Boot from alt_disk_install clone or NIM mksysb restore if rootvg is corrupt.

Verification & Acceptance Criteria

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

bootinfo -b
lspv | grep rootvg

Rollback Plan

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

bootlist -m normal -o > /etc/bootlist.bak

Prevention & Hardening

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

smit chgsys  # schedule firmware updates via HMC change window

errpt LABEL=REBOOT_ID; bosboot 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

IBM AIX 7.3 Boot and Recovery; HMC firmware update guide

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