Edit: Information may still be useful, although I doubt anyone is running this version of HMC code anymore.
Originally posted June 9, 2015 on AIXchange
Recently after upgrading to 8.8.2 SP1, I found my HMC was unable to communicate via RMC to my client LPARs. Though this document helped, when I ran the lspartition -dlpar command, I got this error message:
Can’t start local session rc=2!
The document notes that fix it commands run as root on the Management Console, and gives these specific commands to run as root:
/usr/sbin/rsct/install/bin/recfgct
/usr/sbin/rsct/bin/rmcctrl –p
Of course the problem is you can’t run these commands if you can’t become root. So I contacted IBM Support to get my pesh passwords, and received this email:
Thank you for contacting IBM.
I understand that HMC is displaying error “Can’t start local session rc=2!” when you run”lspartition -dlpar”.
To resolve this issue, please login to your HMC as hscpe, get root access, and run:
/usr/sbin/rsct/install/bin/recfgct
Once you have done this, the “lspartition -dlpar” command should show current RMC connection status.
If you do not have the hscpe user on your HMC, you can create it with:
mkhmcusr -u hscpe -a hmcpe -d “ibm”
If the user already exists, but you do not have the password, you can reset it with:
chhmcusr -u hscpe -t passwd
You can also reset the root password with:
chhmcusr -u root -t passwd
Once you login to the HMC as hscpe, run:
pesh <hmc_serial_number>
You will be prompted for the pesh password which we have to generate using the HMC serial number is listed in the SE field with “lshmc -v”.
Enter the pesh password.
This will bring you to a prompt where you can run:
su – root
Password: <enter_root_password>
You can then run:
/usr/sbin/rsct/install/bin/recfgct
Wait a few minutes, then run:
lspartition -dlpar
You should not get the local session error. If you have issues with the RMC connection not being established for the LPARs, please let us know so that we can continue assisting with standard DLPAR troubleshooting procedures.
In my case this was all I needed to do. Everything started working normally for me.
Incidentally, since writing this, I came across someone else with the same issue. Hopefully as more folks get this information out here, more of us will have an easier time dealing with this problem.