VIP status=unknown issue

AIX 6.1
HA 5.5
Oracle rdbms/clusterware: 10.2.0.4

A network outage on the public interface led to the VIP status becoming
'unknown' in one cluster of 2 LPARs.

What exactly does the STATUS=UNKNOWN signify in the crs_stat output ? Why doesn't the status go OFFLINE instead ?

The 'unknown' status doesn't kead to the vip failing over with a simple
'srvctl start'. Instead we need to crs_stop the 'unknown' resource and then
crs_start it.
What could be causing the status to go 'unknown' instead of 'offline' ?

I've hunted around, but there are plenty of docs detailing what needs to be done to make it online, but I havn't been able to locate anything on the reasons.

Any pointers / suggestions ?

Thanks

Sanjay

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