Hi all,

In the past, I believed the Solaris format command can be a health test for a HBA connection. Format will show no error when hba is working and connecting.
Or error messages indicating the hba or path had failed.

But recently, I come across a situation when I think the connection is broken. The switch port connected to HBA indicated the link is down.

Powermt display dev=all show the device are dead
2304 pci@21d/fibre-channel@1 c4t5d111s0 FA 9cB active dead 0 1
2304 pci@21d/fibre-channel@1 c4t6d111s0 FA 10cB active dead 0 1
2305 pci@23d/fibre-channel@1 c5t5d111s0 FA 7cA active alive 0 0
2305 pci@23d/fibre-channel@1 c5t6d111s0 FA 8cA active alive

However, when we run Solaris format command for that disk, the result is the standard output and didn't show any errors !

# format | grep c4t6d11
96. c4t6d11
165. c4t6d110
166. c4t6d111
167. c4t6d112

Does format command
1. read from memory from previous scan
2. reach the device via other functional ports
3. reach point to point using the physical path of the native device

Any comments, Thank you
Gordon