How to Remove Duplicate virtual SCSI MPIO Paths

Problem:How to Remove Duplicate virtual SCSI MPIO Paths

lspath on my AIX client reports different path status for the same vscsi adapter. How can I remove the duplicate path?

Environment

This document applies to AIX v6.1 and v7.1

Diagnosing the problem

The following example shows hdisk5 has duplicate paths status (one Missing and one Available) for the same virtual SCSI adapter, vscsi0.

Note: It is strongly recommended to ensure up-to-date data backups are in place before attempting to remove the Missing paths.

# lspath -HF "name;connection;parent;path_status;status"
name;connection;parent;path_status;status
hdisk1;820000000000;vscsi0;Available;Enabled
hdisk1;820000000000;vscsi1;Available;Enabled
hdisk0;810000000000;vscsi0;Available;Enabled
hdisk0;810000000000;vscsi1;Available;Enabled
hdisk4;860000000000;vscsi0;Available;Enabled
hdisk5;870000000000;vscsi0;Missing;N/A
hdisk3;840000000000;vscsi0;Available;Enabled
hdisk4;860000000000;vscsi1;Available;Enabled
hdisk5;870000000000;vscsi1;Available;Enabled
hdisk3;880000000000;vscsi1;Available;Enabled
hdisk2;830000000000;vscsi0;Available;Enabled
hdisk2;830000000000;vscsi1;Available;Enabled
hdisk5;850000000000;vscsi0;Available;Enabled

Resolving the problem

To remove the Missing paths, you can try the following:

# rmpath -dl hdisk5 -p vscsi0 -w <connection>
Note the connection ID in the lspath output for the Missing path, in this example is "870000000000".
Use this connection ID as the argument for the -w option in the rmpath command, i.e
# rmpath -dl hdisk5 -p vscsi0 -w 870000000000
Then rerun lspath to ensure you have the expected vscsi0 path Enabled.