Devices can be renamed in AIX 6.1 TL6 and 7.1. The rendev command is used for renaming the devices. One of the use cases would be to rename a group of disks on which application data may reside, to be able to distinguish them from other disks on the system.
Once the device is renamed using rendev command, the device entry under /dev/ corresponding to the old name will go away. A new entry under /dev/ will be seen corresponding to the new name. Applications should refer to the device using the new name.
Example 1 shows how the disk hdisk11 is renamed to testdisk1.
Example 1 Renaming device
# lspv
hdisk0 00cad74f7904d234 rootvg active
hdisk1 00cad74fa9d4a6c2 None
hdisk2 00cad74fa9d3b8de None
hdisk3 00cad74f3964114a None
hdisk4 00cad74f3963c575 None
hdisk5 00cad74f3963c671 None
hdisk6 00cad74f3963c6fa None
hdisk7 00cad74f3963c775 None
hdisk8 00cad74f3963c7f7 None
hdisk9 00cad74f3963c873 None
hdisk10 00cad74f3963ca13 None
hdisk11 00cad74f3963caa9 None
hdisk12 00cad74f3963cb29 None
hdisk13 00cad74f3963cba4 None
# rendev -l hdisk11 -n testdisk1
# lspv
hdisk0 00cad74f7904d234 rootvg active
hdisk1 00cad74fa9d4a6c2 None
hdisk2 00cad74fa9d3b8de None
hdisk3 00cad74f3964114a None
hdisk4 00cad74f3963c575 None
hdisk5 00cad74f3963c671 None
hdisk6 00cad74f3963c6fa None
hdisk7 00cad74f3963c775 None
hdisk8 00cad74f3963c7f7 None
hdisk9 00cad74f3963c873 None
hdisk10 00cad74f3963ca13 None
testdisk1 00cad74f3963caa9 None
hdisk12 00cad74f3963cb29 None
hdisk13 00cad74f3963cba4 None
Note: Certain devices such as /dev/console, /dev/mem, /dev/null, and others that are identified only with /dev special files cannot be renamed. These devices typically do not have any entry in ODM configuration database.
Some devices may have special requirements on their names in order for other devices or applications to use them. Using the rendev command to
rename such a device may result in the device being unusable.
The devices cannot be renamed if they are in use.
Example 2: Renaming hdisk3 to ootvg
rendev -l hdisk3 -n ootvg
The second command fails because ootvg appended to r results in the name rootvg, which conflicts with the rootvg volume group name.
