powermt commands are failing with "ERROR: Cannot open PowerPath. Initialization error"

Summary: Following a successful "emcpadm renamepseudo command, all "powermt" commandsare failing with "ERROR: Cannot open PowerPath. Initialization error"

This article applies to This article does not apply to This article is not tied to any specific product. Not all product versions are identified in this article.

Symptoms

manually disable emcp_mond service.

This is a Solaris 11 environment, with PowerPath 6.0 SP2. PowerPath is successfully installed. After running an "emcpadm renamepseudo" command, "powermt" commands are no longer working and are returning "ERROR:Cannot open PowerPath. Initialization error".

Under /devices/pseudo, when the issue occurs, we can observe that the emcp@32767:0 entry is missing : this entry is the symbolic link of /dev/emcp.

Cause

After installing PowerPath, emcp_mond had been manually disabled. 
Changing the pseudoname of a device will cause emcp.conf file to be updated. emcpadm command is designed to re-read the emcp.conf file after an update. If emcp_mond daemon is running, it prevents unloading of the emcp driver during emcp.conf re-read since the driver is busy. If emcp_mond is disabled, then emcp driver is unloaded during the course of emcpadm operations... which is then causing the observed issue with powermt commands.

If this happens, only a reboot can fix the issue.

Resolution

When the issue occurs, only a reboot will rebuild the /devices/pseudo/emcp@32767:0 entry (symbolic link of /dev/emcp) which is needed for "powermt" commands.

Issue is currently being worked by Powerpath Engineering. Until a fix is developed, do not disable emcp_mond service on Solaris.

Affected Products

PowerPath for Solaris

Products

PowerPath for Solaris
Article Properties
Article Number: 000064247
Article Type: Solution
Last Modified: 17 Oct 2025
Version:  4
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