PowerPath on Solaris: powermt commands failed with error “Cannot open PowerPath. Initialization error” after powerpath upgrade.

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Symptoms

PowerPath upgrade from 5.5P04 to 6.0P03.

OS: Solaris 11

After customer performed PowerPath upgrade from 5.5P04 to 6.0P03, powermt commands failed with error  Cannot open PowerPath. Initialization error .

"pkg info EMCpower" showed the new version 6.0P03, and all the emcpower devices can be seen and used in zpool normally.

We found the /devices/pseudo/emcp@32767:0 is missing.

Also, we saw below error in /var/adm/messages which indicated the emcp_mond failed to start: 
Jul 10 17:10:08 hostname emcp_mond: [ID 205138 local0.error] PP daemon: Error: SetLogMask:: EMS_IOCMD_GET_EXT_MODE failed (0xfffffffe) status 0xebad002.
Jul 10 17:10:08 hostname emcp_mond: [ID 256668 local0.error] PP daemon: Error: Unable to start. Please make sure PowerPath is running properly.

Cause

Unknown

Resolution

After uninstalling PowerPath and rebooting host, and then reinstalling PowerPath 6.0P03 and rebooting host, all powermt commands worked fine.

Additional Information

Below is the recommendations for PowerPath Upgrade on Solaris host.
  1. On Solaris 11, we can directly upgrade PowerPath via running  pkg update  command without uninstalling old PowerPath, then we need to reboot host.
  2. On Solaris 10, we need to uninstall old version firstly and install new version, and then reboot the host.

Affected Products

PowerPath for Solaris

Products

PowerPath for Solaris
Article Properties
Article Number: 000052104
Article Type: Solution
Last Modified: 17 Oct 2025
Version:  3
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