You can hot-plug PCI adapter cards only if their corresponding device drivers support hot-plugging. The following are additional conditions for PCI or PCIe hot-plugging:
If you are adding adapter cards, make sure that slots are available.
If you are removing adapter cards, ensure the following:
The adapter card is hosting only nonvital system resources.
Critical resources are accessible through an alternate pathway.
For example, if a system has only one Ethernet card installed on it, you cannot remove the Ethernet card. Otherwise, network connection is lost. In this case, you must have additional layered software support to keep the network connection active.
You can also use the prtconf command to display additional configuration information that pertains to the hardware such as verifying that an added hardware is correctly configured.
For example, after a configure operation, use the prtconf –D command to verify that the driver is attached to the newly installed hardware device. If the device driver has not been added to the system prior to hardware configuration, you can manually add it by using the add_drv command.
For more information, see prtconf(1M) and add_drv(1M).
Observe the LED indicators on the system to get a visual indication about the status of the slot's hot-plug operation. In the case of PCI Express devices, the LED behavior matches the behavior defined in the PCI Express specification. Otherwise, the behavior might be platform dependent. Refer to your platform guide for specific details.
For PCI Express devices, when the Attention Button is pressed, the power indicator blinks to indicate the beginning of a state transition. The blinking ends when the state transition has ended.
For brevity, the examples on this section list only PCI attachment points. The attachment points that are displayed on your system depend on your system configuration.
The following task map describes the tasks for managing PCI or PCIe devices on your system.
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