Solaris 9 Installation Guide

Chapter 31 Solaris Live Upgrade (Planning)

This chapter provides guidelines and requirements for review before installing and using Solaris Live Upgrade. You also should review general information on upgrading in "Checklist for Upgrading". This chapter contains the following sections:

Solaris Live Upgrade System Requirements

You can upgrade from the Solaris 2.6, Solaris 7, or Solaris 8 operating environment to the Solaris 8 or Solaris 9 operating environment.
You cannot upgrade to the Solaris 7 operating environment.
You must upgrade to the same release that contained the Solaris Live Upgrade software that you installed on the currently running system. For example, if on your current operating environment you installed Solaris Live Upgrade from the Solaris 9 release, you must upgrade to the Solaris 9 release.

Solaris Live Upgrade is included in the Solaris 9 software, but if you want to upgrade from previous releases, you need to install the Solaris Live Upgrade packages on your current operating environment. You can install the Solaris Live Upgrade packages from the following:

An installer on the Solaris 9 DVD, the Solaris 9 Software 2 of 2 CD, or a net installation image.
The pkgadd command. If you are using the pkgadd command, the packages are SUNWlur and SUNWluu, and they should be installed in that order.

For instructions on installing the Solaris Live Upgrade software, see "To Install Solaris Live Upgrade".

Solaris Live Upgrade Disk Space Requirements

Follow general disk space requirements for an upgrade. See Chapter 5, Guidelines for Allocating Disk Space (Planning).

To estimate the file system size that is needed to create a boot environment, start the creation of a new boot environment. The size is calculated and you can then abort the process.

The disk on the new boot environment must be able to serve as a boot device. Some systems restrict which disks can serve as a boot device. Refer to your system's documentation to determine if any boot restrictions apply.

Managing Packages and Patches With Solaris Live Upgrade

The following sections list packages required by Solaris Live Upgrade and provides information on recommended patches. See "Managing Packages and Patches With Solaris Live Upgrade" for information on using Solaris Live Upgrade to add packages and patches.

Caution -

When upgrading and adding and removing packages or patches, Solaris Live Upgrade requires packages or patches that comply with the SVR4 Advanced Packaging Guidelines. While Sun packages conform to these guidelines, Sun cannot guarantee the conformance of packages from third-party vendors. A non-conformant package can cause the package-addition software during an upgrade to fail or worse, alter the active boot environment.

For more information on adding and removing packages with Solaris Live Upgrade, see the man page, luupgrade(1M). For more information on packaging requirements, see Appendix C, Additional SvR4 Packaging Requirements (Reference).

Required Packages

Check your current operating environment for the packages in the following table, which are required to use Solaris Live Upgrade. If packages in the column for your release are missing, use the pkgadd command to add them.

Table 31-1 Required Packages for Solaris Live Upgrade


Solaris 2.6 Release	Solaris 7 Release	Solaris 8 Release
SUNWadmap	SUNWadmap	SUNWadmap
SUNWadmfw	SUNWadmc	SUNWadmc
SUNWadmc	SUNWlibC	SUNWlibC
SUNWmfrun		SUNWbzip
SUNWloc
SUNWlibC

To Check for Packages on Your System

Type the following to list the packages on your system.
% pkginfo [[package_name]]
package_name

List the packages that you want to check

Checking System Patch Levels

Solaris Live Upgrade software is designed to be installed and run on multiple versions of the Solaris operating environment. Correct operation of Solaris Live Upgrade requires the latest recommended patches and security patches for a given OS version. Consult http://sunsolve.sun.com for the correct revision level for a patch cluster for the release of Solaris that you are running.

Guidelines for Creating File Systems With the `lucreate` Command

The lucreate command that is used with the -m option specifies which file systems and the number of file systems to be created in the new boot environment. You must specify the exact number of file systems you want to create by repeating this option. For example, a single use of the -m option specifies where to put all the file systems; you merge all the file systems from the original boot environment into one the one file system specified by the -m option. If you specify the -m option twice, you create two file systems. When using the -m option to create file systems, follow these guidelines:

You must specify one -m option for the root (/) file system for the new boot environment. If you run lucreate without the -m option, the Configuration menu is displayed. The Configuration menu enables you to customize the new boot environment by redirecting files onto new mount points.
Any critical file systems that exist in the current boot environment and are not specified in a -m option are merged into the next highest-level file system created.
Only the file systems that are specified by the -m option are created on the new boot environment. If your current boot environment contains multiple file systems, and you want to have the same number of file systems in the new boot environment created, you must specify one -m option for each file system to be created. For example, if you have file systems for root (/), /opt, and /var, you would use one -m option for each file system on the new boot environment.
Do not duplicate a mount point. For example, you cannot have two root (/) file systems.

Guidelines for Selecting Slices for File Systems

When you create file systems for a boot environment, the rules are identical to the rules for creating file systems for the Solaris operating environment. Solaris Live Upgrade cannot prevent you from creating invalid configurations for critical file systems. For example, you could type a lucreate command that would create separate file systems for root (/) and /kernel--an invalid division of root (/).

Do not overlap slices when re-slicing disks. If this condition exists, the new boot environment appears to have been created, but when activated, the boot environment does not boot. The overlapping file systems might be corrupted.

For Solaris Live Upgrade to work properly, the vfstab file on the active boot environment must have valid contents and must have an entry for root (/) at the minimum.

Guidelines for Selecting a Slice for the root (`/`) File System

When you create an inactive boot environment, you need to identify a slice where the root (/) file system is to be copied. Use the following guidelines when you select a slice for the root (/) file system. The slice must comply with the following:

Must be a slice from which the system can boot.
Must meet the recommended minimum size.
Cannot be a Veritas VxVM volume.
Can be on different physical disks or the same disk as the active root (/) file system.
If you have a sun4m system, the root (/) file system cannot be greater than 2 Gbytes.

The Choices menu displays most free slices that are available for the creation of an inactive boot environment. Some slices are free, but not available to be shown in the Choices menu, such as a Veritas VxVM volume or a Solaris Volume Manager metadevice.

Guidelines for Selecting Slices for root (`/`) Mirrors and Metadevices

You can use Solaris Live Upgrade on a system that is currently using either Solaris Volume Manager metadevices or Veritas Volume Manager VxVM volumes. The source boot environment can be contained on any combination of physical disk slices, Solaris Volume Manager metadevices, or Veritas Volume Manager volumes. When creating a new boot environment, the slice chosen for the root (/) file system for the new boot environment can be either a physical disk slice or a Solaris Volume Manager metadevice. If you choose a Solaris Volume Manager metadevice for the root file system, the metadevice must be either a stripe with only a single disk or a mirror on a single-disk stripe. See metaroot(1M) for more details.

You cannot use a Veritas VxFS volume for the root (/) file system when creating a new boot environment. For any file system except the root (/) file system, you can use either a physical disk slice, a Solaris Volume Manager metadevice, or a Veritas VXFS volume.

Table 31-2 describes the acceptable disk configurations for creating a boot environment when using metadevices or volumes.

Table 31-2 Acceptable Slices for Metadevices or Volumes


Product	Source Slice	If Target is a Metadevice for a root (`/`) File System	If Target is not a root (`/`) File System, but is for `/usr`, `/var`, or `/opt`
Solaris Volume Manger	For the root (`/`) file system, the source can be a metadevice or physical slice	The root (`/`) file system, must be either a stripe with only a single disk or a mirror on a single-disk stripe	Other file systems can be either a physical slice or metadevice
Veritas VxVM Volume Manager	For the root (`/`) file system, the source can be a volume or physical slice	The root (`/`) file system, cannot be a VsVM volume; root (`/`) must be a physical slice	Other file systems can be either a physical slice or volume

When creating a new boot environment, the lucreate -m command recognizes the following three types of devices only:

A physical slice in the form of /dev/dsk/cnumtnumdnumsnum
A Solaris Volume Manager metadevice in the form of /dev/md/dsk/dnum
A Veritas VxFS volume in the form of /dev/vx/dsk/volume_name

Using boot environments with metadevices or volumes has special considerations when upgrading or installing a flash archive, see "Upgrading Metadevices and Volumes" for details.

Note -

If you have problems upgrading with Veritas VxVM, see "System Panics When Upgrading With Solaris Live Upgrade Running Veritas VxVm".

Guidelines for Selecting a Slice for a `swap` File System

The swap slice cannot be in use by any boot environment except the current boot environment or if the -s option is used, the source boot environment. The boot environment creation fails if the swap slice is being used by any other boot environment, whether the slice contains a swap, ufs, or any other file system.

Guidelines for Selecting Slices for Shareable File Systems

Solaris Live Upgrade copies the entire contents of a slice to the designated new boot environment slice. You might want some large file systems on that slice to be shared between boot environments rather than copied to conserve space and copying time. File systems critical to the operating environment such as root (/) and /var must be copied. File systems such as /home are not critical file systems and could be shared between boot environments. Shareable file systems must be user-defined file systems and on separate swap slices on both the active and new boot environments. You can reconfigure the disk several ways depending on your needs.

You can reslice the disk before creating the new boot environment and put the shareable file system on its own slice. For example, if root (/), /var, and /home are all on the same slice, reconfigure the disk and put /home on its own slice. When you create any new boot environments, /home is shared with the new boot environment by default.
If you want to share a directory, the directory must be split off to its own slice. The directory is then a file system that can be shared with other boot environment. You can use the lucreate command with the -m option to create a new boot environment and split a directory off to its own slice. But, the new file system cannot yet be shared with the original boot environment. You need to run the lucreate command with the -m option again to create another boot environment. The two new boot environments can then share the directory.

For example, if you wanted to upgrade to from Solaris 8 to Solaris 9 release and share /home, you could run the lucreate command with the -m option to create a Solaris 8 release with /home as a separate file system on its own slice. Then run the lucreate command with the -m again to duplicate that boot environment. This third boot environment can then be upgrade to the Solaris 9 release. /home is shared between the Solaris 8 and Solaris 9 releases.

For a description of shareable and critical file systems, see "Creating a Boot Environment Overview".

Using Solaris Live Upgrade From a Remote System

When viewing the character interface remotely, such as over a tip line, you might need to set the TERM environment variable to VT220. Also, when using the Common Desktop Environment (CDE), set the value of the TERM variable to dtterm, rather than xterm.