How to Remove an Interface From an IPMP Group

When you execute the ifconfig command's group parameter with a null string, the interface is removed from its current IPMP group. Be careful when removing interfaces from a group. If some other interface in the IPMP group has failed, a failover could have happened earlier. For example, if hme0 failed previously, all addresses are failed over to hme1, if hme1 is part of the same group. The removal of hme1 from the group causes the in.mpathd daemon to return all the failover addresses to some other interface in the group. If no other interfaces are functioning in the group, failover might not restore all the network accesses.

Similarly, when an interface in a group needs to be unplumbed, you should first remove the interface from the group. Then, ensure that the interface has all the original IP addresses configured. The in.mpathd daemon tries to restore the original configuration of an interface that is removed from the group. You need to ensure that the configuration is restored before unplumbing the interface. Refer to What Happens During Interface Failover to see how interfaces look before and after a failover.

1. On the system with the IPMP group configuration, assume the Primary Administrator role or become superuser.

   The Primary Administrator role includes the Primary Administrator profile. To create the role and assign the role to a user, see Chapter 2, Working With the Solaris Management Console (Tasks), in System Administration Guide: Basic Administration.

2. Remove the interface from the IPMP group.

   # ifconfig interface group ""

   The quotation marks indicate a null string.

Example 31–7 Removing an Interface From a Group

To remove hme0 from the IPMP group test, you would type the following command:

# ifconfig hme0 group ""
	# ifconfig hme0
	hme0: flags=9000843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST,IPv4> mtu 1500
    index 2 inet 192.168.85.19 netmask ffffff00 broadcast 192.168.85.255
	# ifconfig hme0 inet6
	hme0: flags=a000841<UP,RUNNING,MULTICAST,IPv6> mtu 1500 index 2
    inet6 fe80::a00:20ff:feb9:19fa/10