I've shared my tips for resolving DLPAR problems in the past. So this week, when one of my colleagues was experiencing an issue with DLPAR, I referred him to my blog post and suggested he follow the troubleshooting steps. He did so and I went about my business. Later that same day I asked him how he had fared. He told me that DLPAR was still not working on his particular AIX LPAR. It was an AIX 5.3 system and he was attempting to another Virtual Processor to the LPAR. He expressed his frustration with the situation, so I offered to take a look for him.

What I found was that the system was missing an important fileset. A fileset that enabled DLPAR operations on AIX 5.3 systems. The fileset in question was named csm.client. Without this fileset installed DLPAR would never work.

I advised my colleague of the problem and suggested he follow the steps below to resolve the issue. After he reinstalled the fileset, RMC communication between the HMC and LPAR was restored and his DLPAR processor add operation completed without issue.

1. Mount the NIM masters lpp_source file system:

aix53lpar1 : / # mount nim1:/export/lpp_source /mnt

2. Verify CSM filesets are not installed and the IBM.DRM subsystem is either inoperative or missing.

aix53lpar1 : /# oslevel -s

5300-12-04-1119

aix53lpar1 : / # lslpp -l | grep -i csm

aix53lpar1 : / #

aix53lpar1 : / # lssrc -a | grep rsct

ctrmc rsct 290870 active

IBM.ServiceRM rsct_rm 237818 active

ctcas rsct inoperative

IBM.ERRM rsct_rm inoperative

IBM.AuditRM rsct_rm inoperative

IBM.LPRM rsct_rm inoperative

IBM.HostRM rsct_rm inoperative

IBM.DRM rsct_rm inoperative

IBM.SensorRM rsct_rm inoperative

aix53lpar1 : / # lsrsrc IBM.ManagementServer

/usr/sbin/rsct/bin/lsrsrc-api: 2612-010 Resource class IBM.ManagementServer is not defined.

3. Verify that the HMC is unable to establish RMC communication with the LPAR (refer to RMC message below on the HMC).

4. Install the csm.client fileset (and pre-reqs) from the 5300-12-04-1119 lpp_source.

aix53lpar1 : / # cd /mnt/lpp_sourceaix531204

aix53lpar1 : /mnt/lpp_sourceaix531204 # installp -agd . csm.client

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+

Pre-installation Verification...

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+

Verifying selections...done

Verifying requisites...done

Results...

etc

Installation Summary

--------------------

Name Level Part Event Result

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

csm.core 1.7.1.0 USR APPLY SUCCESS

csm.core 1.7.1.0 ROOT APPLY SUCCESS

csm.client 1.7.1.0 USR APPLY SUCCESS

csm.client 1.7.1.0 ROOT APPLY SUCCESS

5. Verify that the IBM.DRM subsystem is now active and the HMC can communicate with the LPAR via RMC.

aix53lpar1 : / # lssrc -a | grep rsct

IBM.ServiceRM rsct_rm 237818 active

ctrmc rsct 290876 active

IBM.CSMAgentRM rsct_rm 360522 active

IBM.AuditRM rsct_rm 446624 active

IBM.HostRM rsct_rm 504016 active

IBM.LPRM rsct_rm 401568 active

IBM.DRM rsct_rm 348364 active

ctcas rsct inoperative

IBM.ERRM rsct_rm inoperative

IBM.SensorRM rsct_rm inoperative

IBM.MgmtDomainRM rsct_rm inoperative

aix53lpar1 : / # lsrsrc IBM.ManagementServer

Resource Persistent Attributes for IBM.ManagementServer

resource 1:

Name = "10.10.10.252"

Hostname = "10.10.10.252"

ManagerType = "HMC"

LocalHostname = "10.10.10.65"

ClusterTM = "9078-160"

ClusterSNum = ""

ActivePeerDomain = ""

NodeNameList = {"aix53lpar1"}

resource 2:

Name = "10.10.10.251"

Hostname = "10.10.10.251"

ManagerType = "HMC"

LocalHostname = "10.10.10.65"

ClusterTM = "9078-160"

ClusterSNum = ""

ActivePeerDomain = ""

NodeNameList = {"aix53lpar1"}

aix53lpar1 : / # lsrsrc IBM.MCP

Resource Persistent Attributes for IBM.MCP

resource 1:

MNName = "10.10.10.65"

NodeID = 12019572219563664974

KeyToken = "10.10.10.251"

IPAddresses = {"10.10.10.251","172.16.0.1"}

ActivePeerDomain = ""

NodeNameList = {"aix53lpar1"}

resource 2:

MNName = "10.10.10.65"

NodeID = 6374098991051202638

KeyToken = "10.10.10.252"

IPAddresses = {"10.10.10.252","172.17.0.2"}

ActivePeerDomain = ""

NodeNameList = {"aix53lpar1"}