IBM AIX 7.1 – Common Problem 209 – 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

errpt reports PERM hardware errors such as DISK_ERR or SCSI_ERR repeatedly.

Environment & Reproduction

Aging drives, SAN path issues, or backplane firmware mismatches.

errpt | head
errpt -a | head -60
lspath

Root Cause Analysis

A physical or path-level hardware fault is producing repeated permanent errors.

Quick Triage

Identify the failing resource and its label.

errpt -d H -T PERM
lsattr -El hdisk2
lspath -l hdisk2

Step-by-Step Diagnosis

Correlate errpt entries with MPIO path state and adapter logs.

errpt -a -j  | head
lspath -l hdisk2
fcstat fcs0 | head

Solution – Primary Fix

Disable failed paths, replace hardware, then restore paths and clear errpt.

chpath -l hdisk2 -p fscsi1 -s disable
rmdev -dl hdisk2
cfgmgr -l fcs0

Solution – Alternative Approaches

Migrate data with migratepv to healthy disks and decommission the failing PV.

Verification & Acceptance Criteria

errpt shows no new PERM entries and all paths return to Enabled.

errpt | head
lspath
fcstat fcs0

Rollback Plan

Re-enable a previously disabled path if hardware tests pass.

chpath -l hdisk2 -p fscsi1 -s enable
lspath -l hdisk2
errpt

Prevention & Hardening

Schedule diagela and monitor fcstat, lspath, and SAN health proactively.

Related Errors & Cross-Refs

Related to LVM read errors, IO hangs, and VG quorum loss.

Related tutorial: View the step-by-step tutorial for aix-7.1.

View all aix-7.1 tutorials on the Tutorials Hub →

Browse all common problems & solutions on the Tutorials Hub.

References & Further Reading

IBM AIX 7.2 diagnostics and error log reference.