I found the solution/information with JTAC's help:
From the ticket...
Due to the HW limitations (thermal and cooling constraints), it can support only a maximum of 2 PICs at a time. Hence, a CLI knob was designed to offline the PICs which will help the users to select the PICs needed. Since this is a fixed port MPCs, at least one PIC wasexpected to be online for this MPC. Otherwise, there is no WAN interfaces for this MPC. Hence, the CLI knob was intentionally designed to have at least one PIC to be online. If all the PICs are offline in the CLI, it will be treated as an invalid configuration.
The PICs 0 and 2 belong to PFE-0 and the PICs 1 and 3 belong to PFE-1. In other words, the even numbered PICs belong to the even number PFE (i.e. PFE-0) and the odd numbered PICs belong to the odd number PFE (i.e. PFE-1).
If there is a CLI configuration with an invalid PIC combination, the default PICs (PIC-0 and PIC-1) will be powered ON. Also, a syslog message will be displayed to indicate the invalid PIC combination selected.
There won't be any CLI commit failures when an invalid PIC combination is selected. In other words, the commit will succeed even for the invalid PIC combination.
Here is the table which summarizes the various possible combinations and the expected behavior.
CLI Configuration
PIC Selection
Default (i.e. no CLI configuration)
Online: PIC-0, PIC-1
Offline: PIC-2, PIC-3
PIC-1, PIC-2 and PIC-3 powered OFF
Online: PIC-0
Offline: PIC-1, PIC-2, PIC-3
PIC-0, PIC-2 and PIC-3 powered OFF
Online: PIC-1
Offline: PIC-0, PIC-2, PIC-3
PIC-0, PIC-1 and PIC-3 powered OFF
Online: PIC-2
Offline: PIC-0, PIC-1, PIC-3
PIC-0, PIC-1 and PIC-2 powered OFF
Online: PIC-3
Offline: PIC-0, PIC-1, PIC-2
PIC-2 and PIC-3 powered OFF
Online: PIC-0, PIC-1
Offline: PIC-2, PIC-3
PIC-1 and PIC-2 powered OFF
Online: PIC-0, PIC-3
Offline: PIC-1, PIC-2
PIC-0 and PIC-3 powered OFF
Online: PIC-2, PIC-1
Offline: PIC-0, PIC-3
PIC-0 and PIC-1 powered OFF
Online: PIC-2, PIC-3
Offline: PIC-0, PIC-1
The commands to disable pic's are (replace X with your desired values):
set chassis fpc X pic X power off
set chassis fpc X pic X power off
You can confirm status of the PIC before and after using this command (where X is your fpc):
show chassis fpc pic-status X
Example output:
before...
admin@9214> show chassis fpc pic-status 7
Slot 7 Online EX9200 24x10GE+6x40GE
PIC 0 Online 12X10GE SFPP
PIC 1 Online 12X10GE SFPP
PIC 2 Offline 3X40GE QSFPP
PIC 3 Offline 3X40GE QSFPP
after...
admin@9214> show chassis fpc pic-status 7
Slot 7 Online EX9200 24x10GE+6x40GE
PIC 0 Online 12X10GE SFPP
PIC 1 Offline 12X10GE SFPP
PIC 2 Offline 3X40GE QSFPP
PIC 3 Online 3X40GE QSFPP
The error message I was getting in log messages while trying to bring 2 pic's from the same PFE online:
Apr 27 10:15:03 9214-re0 chassisd[2023]: fpc_pic_process_pic_power_off_config :Invalid pic combination configured on FPC 7 Using default Pics 0 and 1
This card is similar to the MX linecard