The state of a system link is dependent on the state of the various hardware components that it travels over. To resolve any problems associated with a system link, use the following procedure.

The switch maintains a list of hardware components over which the link travels, called the hardware path. There are two hardware paths: the current hardware path and the faulted hardware path for each of the system links. The current hardware path is present only for those links that are currently up. When a link is down, the current hardware path is empty. The faulted hardware path is always present once the link has gone down, and is not cleared when the link subsequently recovers. The faulted path preserves the path that the link traversed when it last went down. The time at which the faulted path was last recorded is preserved and is accessible through status sys-link location and list sys-link. Therefore, the focus of attention for problems which do not involve a link that is down is the current hardware path. If the link is down, faulted hardware path is the focus of attention.