Solaris 7 and Boot-Disk Partition Sizes

If you are upgrading the operating environment from Solaris 2.6 to Solaris 7 3/99 and you used the partition layout suggested in the SMCC Hardware Platform Guide Solaris 2.6, the partitions may not be large enough for the upgrade to succeed. For instance, the /usr partition must be at least 653 megabytes. If /usr is smaller than the size needed to perform the upgrade, suninstall uses the Dynamic Space Reallocation (DSR) mode to reallocate the space of the disk partitions.

DSR may calculate a partition layout which is not acceptable for some systems. For instance, DSR may select partitions that appear to DSR as being unused (non-UFS partitions which may contain raw data or other types of file systems). If DSR selects a used partition, data loss may occur. Therefore, you must know the current status of the partitions DSR wants to use before you allow DSR to continue with the reallocation of the disk partitions.

After DSR presents an acceptable layout and you choose to proceed with the reallocation, DSR will adjust the affected file systems, and the upgrade will continue. However, if you cannot constrain the layout so that it is acceptable for your needs, then you may need to manually repartition the boot device, or you may have to perform a fresh install.