Received error msg when using rmsf -H 8/0 comand

[John Knapp]

I was attempting to logically remove my EMC Symmetrix 5500 disks from two SCSI HSC interfaces prior to physically disconnecting the SCSI cables from host (K570 HP/UX v10.20) to array when I encountered the following errors:

rmsf: io_destroy failed - Parameter error.
....
....
rmsf: io_destroy failed - No match found.

Then I received my root prompt. Ran ioscan -funC disk and did not see the disks that I wanted to remove ... went through the shutdown -h now and disconnected cables. All seems to be okay but still wondering why & what was the error messages?

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi John:

The errors suggest that the device(s) has already been removed. You can use a simple 'rm', too to remove the device files you no longer need once you have disconnected the cables.

Regards!

...JRF...

[John Knapp]

James ... thanks but all I had done up to that point was to vgexport the volume groups. On the ioscan -funC disk, the devices were there prior to running the rmsf command ... after the invocation of the command they were gone as expected ...

[S.K. Chan]

I noticed this "message" if I try to rmsf a special file that does not show up in ioscan ouput. For instance..
# ioscan -fnC disk
....
disk 1 10/0/15/0.5.0 sdisk CLAIMED ....
....
I'm not seeing /dev/dsk/c2t5d0 in the above output. So if I try to rmsf ..
# rmsf -H 10/0/15/0.5.0
I'll get the same message you got, just the one message "..no match found".
So I'm guessing this may be the same case for you.

[John Knapp]

S.K. .... thanks for the insight but I know the special devices file was not removed prior to issuing the rmsf command ...

This may be one of those questions that doesn't have a rational answer ... maybe the first thing the command does is remove the special device file and thus causes the error ....

[Frank Slootweg]

Which *exact* rmsf(1M) command did you give, i.e. which options and which parameters?

OOPS! Perhaps I should read the subject before responding! :-)

But anyway, was it just "rmsf -H 8/0" or more/different than that?

[John Knapp]

Frank ...

It was just rmsf -H 8/0

it also appeared that for every Symmetrix hypervolume assigned to the SCSI adapter elicited a "rmsf: io_destroy failed - Parameter error" error message .... I did not actually count the number of those error records and compared that number to the hyper count but I bet it is not far off.

[Frank Slootweg · Accepted solution]

I *thought* I knew this stuff, but ... :-(

I searched our Knowledge DataBases on these messages ("io_destroy failed"). It *seems* that they are normal messages, especailly the "io_destroy failed - No match found." one.

As far as I can tell, they *probably* can be prevented by using a two-step approach:

rmsf -k -H ...

i.e. with the "-k" option, i.e. do remove the definition of the device from the system (ioconfig et al), but do not remove the device files.

rmsf /dev/...

i.e. remove (only) the device files.

[John Knapp]

Frank ... I was hoping to hear from someone that the "error" messages were really informational rather than exception. As far as I can tell, the -H switch did what it was supposed to do but I just couldn't understand why the msgs were issued.

Thank you everyone for the suggestions/input ...