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21.5. Removing a Path to a Storage Device

If you are removing a path to a device that uses multipathing (without affecting other paths to the device), then the general procedure is as follows:
Procedure 21.2. Removing a Path to a Storage Device
  1. Remove any reference to the device's path-based name, like /dev/sd or /dev/disk/by-path or the major:minor number, in applications, scripts, or utilities on the system. This is important in ensuring that different devices added in the future will not be mistaken for the current device.
  2. Take the path offline using echo offline > /sys/block/sda/device/state.
    This will cause any subsequent I/O sent to the device on this path to be failed immediately. Device-mapper-multipath will continue to use the remaining paths to the device.
  3. Remove the path from the SCSI subsystem. To do so, use the command echo 1 > /sys/block/device-name/device/delete where device-name may be sde, for example (as described in Procedure 21.1, “Ensuring a Clean Device Removal”).
After performing Procedure 21.2, “Removing a Path to a Storage Device”, the path can be safely removed from the running system. It is not necessary to stop I/O while this is done, as device-mapper-multipath will re-route I/O to remaining paths according to the configured path grouping and failover policies.
Other procedures, such as the physical removal of the cable, followed by a rescan of the SCSI bus to cause the operating system state to be updated to reflect the change, are not recommended. This will cause delays due to I/O timeouts, and devices may be removed unexpectedly. If it is necessary to perform a rescan of an interconnect, it must be done while I/O is paused, as described in Section 21.9, “Scanning Storage Interconnects”.