On an AIX system it is possible for garbage erroneous errors to be written to the error report. Recently it was discovered that AIX was attempting to bring a HBA port up, then generating two errors. The errors in question which are generated are similar to:
FCA_ERR12
INFO: Adapter link in dead state during driver close
FCA_ERR4
Too many FABRIC_OPS failures (FLOGI fail)
You may receive slightly different information, but the important piece is the “FCA_ERR12 and FCA_ERR4”. These are hba port errors when AIX is attempting to bring the port up. In my specific case, there is no cable connected to fcs1/fcs3, so it shouldn’t even be attempting to bring it online, matter alone logging errors.
The fix is two part:
1) Put the device(s) in a Defined state with: (via command-line)
rmdev -l fscsiX -R
2) Turn off FC protocol driver (thus error logs)
chdev -l fscsiX -a autoconfig=defined
This also helps anytime the system bus is scanned with cfgmgr as AIX will leave the specific HBA adapters (fscsiX) devices in a Defined state.
If you wish to re-enable this (assuming you have now connected a hba cable to the port), you can re-enable it with:
1) Turn on FC Protocol driver (thus error logs)
chdev -l fscsiX -a autoconfig=available
2) Perform a cfgmgr on the system. This will then find those fscsiX devices, and bring them into an Available state.