Edit: Some links no longer work.
Originally posted August 7, 2012 on AIXchange
I was using a NIM server to load AIX, and it kept stopping at LED 0611. My first thought was to check this Redbook, but when I didn’t find anything there, I just did a web search. That let me to Steve Knudson’s AIX Network Installation Management Basics slides, which indicated that I was dealing with an NFS issue.
“Client hangs at LED 0611 – Indicates that some nfs resource that should be exported from the nim master is not available to the nim client. Mostly likely cause is that a parent directory was already exported to the client. the nim_bosinst process doesn’t always give errors when starting off this way. Check exports on the server, they should look something like this:
# exportfs
/export/aix433/images/mksysb.minimal -ro,root=nim6:,access=nim6:
/export/aix433/lppsource -ro,root=nim6:,access=nim6:
/export/aix433/spot/spot_aix433/usr -ro,root=nim6:,access=nim6:
/export/aix433/res/bundle.gnu -ro,root=nim6:,access=nim6:
/export/aix433/res/itab.mkmaster -ro,root=nim6:,access=nim6:
/export/aix433/res/bosinst.initial.B50 -ro,root=nim6:,access=nim6:
/export/nim/scripts/nim6.script -ro,root=nim6:,access=nim6:
“If the exports are substantially different from these, then power off client node. On the nim master run:
nim -o reset -aforce=yes clientnode
nim -Fo deallocate -asubclass=all clientnode
exportfs -ua
edit /etc/exports, remove inappropriate entries
nim_bosinst the client node again
“You can also get this led 611 when nim master resolves client hostnames in /etc/hosts.
“Entries there should be ipaddr fullyqualifiedname shortname.”
I went through these hints, reset the client, deallocated resources and then set up the client again. It still didn’t work. I went through /etc/hosts and tried a few permutations, and again, no luck.
At this point, I made a rookie mistake and changed a few different things at once. One of those changes fixed my issue, I’m just not sure which one. I do have it narrowed down to two possibilities. First, when I found this, I once again made sure that /etc/hosts had the correct information, and then I edited /etc/netsvc.conf and added hosts = local4,bind4.
That might have been the solution. Or, it could have come from this. The last entry in the thread says:
“Having spent the weekend making wild stabs in the dark I stumbled across the ‘solution.’ Please [provide] feedback as I’d like to understand what I’m doing.
“I used SMIT NIM/Perform NIM Administration Tasks/Configure NIM Environment Options. (This is sounding obvious, I know.) I then selected two options, the one that made the difference, I’m not sure. Maybe someone could point it out? Export NIM Resources Globally and Control Client Resource Allocation/Set Allocation Permissions for all clients.”
In any event, after making both of these changes, my NIM server was working again, and my mksysb booted and loaded as expected.
Interestingly enough, after I had this experience, one of my customers went through something similar. The customer addressed their issue by running these commands:
stopsrc –g nfs
cd /etc
rm –rf rmtab xtab
cd /var/statmon
rm –rf sm sm.bak state
startsrc –g nfs
Like many other things in AIX, there’s more than one way to tackle this issue. I’m not sure if there’s a preferred way. Perhaps some of you NIM experts could chime in on that in Comments. I’d love to hear from you.