EMC Powerpath disk subsystem freezes up after upgrade to sles11sp2.

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Environment

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 Service Pack 2

Situation

Migrate a couple of SLES 11 SP1 systems that run Oracle RAC Cluster 11gR2 to SLES11SP2. Steps used for the migration:
1) Before the upgrade, EMC Powerpath 5.7 SP1 was removed from the SLES 11 SP1 OS
2) Performed the upgrade based on the zypper dup methods
3) Installed EMC Powerpath 5.7 SP1 P01 for SLES 11 SP2.
When Powerpath starts up (either at boot time, or manually after boot time), get a mutex_lock error and the disk subsystem freezes up. The rest of the system remains available and functioning. Can no longer probe scsi devices, list out physical volumes in LVM, or run any powerpath commands.

Have also tried using powerpath 5.7 SP1 (without patch 01) for SLES 11 SP2, but it's hanging as well. disk subsystem freezes up. The rest of the system remains available and functioning, but I can no longer probe scsi devices, list out physical volumes in LVM, or run any powerpath commands.

Resolution

Use the EMC PowerPath 5.7.1 HotFix 04 which now supports the 3.0.74 and 3.0.80 kernels.

Cause

There was a null pointer reference in the PowerPath 5.7 series when 3.0.74 and 3.0.80 kernels were introduced into SLES. 3.0.58 kernel work.

Additional Information

Also tried using powerpath 5.7 SP1 (without patch 01) for SLES 11 SP2, but it's hanging as well.

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