Edit: Have you run into this issue?
Originally posted June 9, 2020 on AIXchange
What happens when you try to use migratepv to move rootvg to the new LUN and remove the copy of rootvg from the original LUN?
My client added a LUN to an LPAR on the fly using cfgmgr. When we tried to use migratepv to move rootvg to the new LUN and remove the copy of rootvg from the original LUN, we got this error:
0516-1259 mirrorvg: None of the available disks support booting on this specific system or the boot logical volume already exists on the specified disk. If these are new bootable disks and you have not rebooted since configuring them. You may try exporting LVM_HOTSWAP_BOOTDISK=1 and run this command again to override this condition. 0516-1200 mirrorvg: Failed to mirror the volume group.
A web search turned up the following.
On POWER machine systems, a disk is found to be bootable by the system firmware, at IPL time. Each LPAR runs its own private version of the firmware, which probes for all available hardware for that partition, and builds a device tree in NVRAM. When AIX® boots it reads this device tree and runs cfgmgr to configure the devices in AIX.
If a disk is added AFTER boot time, it has usually not been configured correctly by the firmware to allow AIX to see that it is bootable.
Resolving The Problem
1) Run the command below:
# export LVM_HOTSWAP_BOOTDISK=1
# bootinfo -B hdisk1
Then, please confirm the output is 1 then process to mirror the root volume group again.
2) [Restart] the firmware by shutting down the LPAR and powering it off, then reactivating it and rebooting will allow the firmware to probe the adapter and disks again to and mark them as bootable.
If the same issue persists, please contact the IBM AIX Software Support Team.
We tried exporting the LVM_HOTSWAP_BOOTDISK=1 and running the mirrorvg, but it failed again. But once we shut off the LPAR and restarted it, it worked as expected.
Disclaimer: I like sharing these tips with you, the reader, but my future self also appreciates having these out there. That’s because it’s entirely possible I’ll run into a similar dilemma down the line.