Activating a Boot Environment

Activating a boot environment makes it bootable on the next reboot of the system. You can also switch back quickly to the original boot environment if a failure occurs on booting the newly active boot environment. See "Failure Recovery: Falling Back to the Original Boot Environment (Command-Line Interface)".

To successfully activate a boot environment, that boot environment must meet the following conditions:

The boot environment must have a status of "complete." To check status, see "Displaying the Status of All Boot Environments".
If the boot environment is not the current boot environment, you cannot have mounted the partitions of that boot environment by using lumount(1M) or mount(1M).
The boot environment you want to activate cannot be involved in a comparison operation. See "Comparing Boot Environments".

Note -

If you want to reconfigure swap, make this change prior to booting the inactive boot environment. By default, all boot environments share the same swap devices. To reconfigure swap, see "To Create a New Boot Environment," Step 9 or "To Create a Boot Environment and Reconfigure Swap (Command-Line Interface)".

To Activate a Boot Environment (Character Interface)

The first time you boot from a newly created boot environment, Solaris Live Upgrade software synchronizes the new boot environment with the boot environment that was last active. The active boot environment is not necessarily the boot environment that was the source for the newly created boot environment. "Synchronize" here means that certain system files and directories are copied from the last-active boot environment to the boot environment being booted. Solaris Live Upgrade does not perform this synchronization after this initial boot, unless you type yes when asked the question,"Do you want to force a Live Upgrade sync operations."

If you force a synchronization, Solaris Live Upgrade checks for conflicts between files that are subject to synchronization. When the new boot environment is booted and a conflict is detected, a warning is issued and the files are not synchronized. Activation can complete successfully, in spite of such a conflict. A conflict can occur if you, for example, do one of the following:

Upgrade the current boot environment to a new operating system
Upgrade an inactive boot environment to a new operating system and modify files on the original boot environment
Modify system files such as /etc/passwd on both the boot environments

Use this option with great care, because you might not be aware or in control of changes that might have occurred in the last-active boot environment. For example, if you were running Solaris 9 software on your current boot environment and booted back to a Solaris 2.6 release with a forced synchronization, files could be changed on the 2.6 release. Because files are dependent on the release of the operating environment, the boot to the Solaris 2.6 release could fail because the Solaris 9 files might not be compatible with the Solaris 2.6 files.

From the Solaris Live Upgrade main menu, select Activate.

Type the name of the boot environment to make active:

Name of Boot Environment: solaris_9
Do you want to force a Live Upgrade sync operations: no

You can either continue or force a synchronization of files.
- Press Return to continue.
  
  The first time the boot environment is booted, files are automatically synchronized.
- You can force a synchronizaton of files, but use this feature with caution. Operating systems on each boot environment must be compatible with files being synchronized. To force a synchronization of files, type:
  Do you want to force a Live Upgrade sync operations: yes

Press F3 to begin the activation process.

Press Return to continue.

The new boot environment is activated at the next reboot.

To activate the inactive boot environment, reboot:
# init 6

To Activate a Boot Environment (Command-Line Interface)

To activate the boot environment, type:
# /usr/sbin/luactivate BE_name
BE_name

Specifies the name of the boot environment that is to be activated.

Reboot.
# init 6
Caution -
Use only the init or shutdown commands to reboot. Do not use the reboot, halt, or uadmin commands or the system does not switch boot environments. The last active boot environment is booted again.

Example 33-4 Activating a Boot Environment (Command-Line Interface)

In this example, the second_disk boot environment is activated at the next reboot.

# /usr/sbin/luactivate second_disk
# init 6

To Activate a Boot Environment and Synchronize Files (Command-Line Interface)

If you force a synchronization with the -s option, luactivate checks for conflicts between files that are subject to synchronization. When the new boot environment is booted and a conflict is detected, a warning is issued and the files are not synchronized. Activation can complete successfully, in spite of such a conflict. A conflict can occur if you, for example, do the following:

Upgrade the current boot environment to a new operating system
Upgrade an inactive boot environment to a new operating system and modify files on the original boot environment
Modify system files such as /etc/passwd on both the boot environments

To activate the boot environment, type:

# /usr/sbin/luactivate  -s BE_name

BE_name

Specifies the name of the boot environment that is to be activated.

-s

Causes synchronization of files between the last-active boot environment and the new boot environment.

The -s option is used to synchronize files after the first activation of a boot environment. The first time a boot environment is activated, the files between the boot environment are synchronized, but with subsequent activations, the files are not synchronized. Use this option with great caution, because you might not be aware or in control of changes that might have occurred in the last-active boot environment.

Reboot.
# init 6

Example 33-5 Activating a Boot Environment (Command-Line Interface)

In this example, the second_disk boot environment is activated at the next reboot and the files are synchronized.

# /usr/sbin/luactivate -s second_disk
# init 6