With devices "Defined" and "Available" mean exactly that. There is no way to "make" it available if it isn't already.

A device in AIX is a definition in a configuration database (the ODM). When the device is defined there it will be listed in the output of lsdev and similar commands. If it is listed as "defined" or "available" depends on the physical entity which is represented by the definition being connected to the system or not.

For instance: consider a hard disk. If you connect it to the system for the first time the cfgmgr will put the respective definition into the ODM. As it is connected to the system it is in state "available". If you now remove the disk from the system it will be in the state "defined" as long as you don't explicitly remove the entry from the database (via rmdev or something similar). If you reconnect the hard disk to the system it will be "available" again, etc..

That means: to "make a device available" you have to do exactly that - (re-)connect the device to the system. A device being "defined" means usually: it once was there but now isn't any more.

I hope this helps.

bakunin