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Solaris 9 4/03 Release Notes

Installing a Solaris Flash Differential Archive by Using Solaris Live Upgrade

Overview

Solaris Live Upgrade provides a method of upgrading a system while it continues to operate. While your current boot environment is running, you can duplicate the boot environment and then upgrade the duplicate. The original system configuration remains fully functional and unaffected by the upgrade or installation of a Solaris Flash archive. When you are ready, you can activate the new boot environment by rebooting the system. If a failure occurs, you can quickly revert to the original boot environment with a simple reboot, thereby eliminating the normal downtime of the test and evaluation process.

After you have created an inactive boot environment with Solaris Live Upgrade, the new boot environment can be upgraded. Installing a Solaris Flash archive onto an inactive boot environment is one method of upgrading the boot environment. A Solaris Flash archive installation overwrites all the files on the new boot environment. Installing a differential archive updates a boot environment with only minor changes. The differential archive contains the differences between two system images, the unchanged-master-system image and an updated-master-system image. During the installation of a differential archive, only the files that are indicated in the archive are added, changed, or deleted on the boot environment. Using a differential archive provides a quick way of updating a clone system with small changes.

For information about creating a Solaris Flash differential archive, see the Solaris 9 Installation Guide.

To Create a Profile for Use By Solaris Live Upgrade

After the differential archive is created, it can be installed on the new boot environment by using Solaris Live Upgrade. Solaris Live Upgrade requires a profile that provides the upgrade parameters. The profile is then accessed by the luupgrade command.

  1. Use a text editor to create a text file.

  2. Add profile keywords and values that provide upgrade parameters. The following keywords can be used for a differential archive.

    Table 3–1 Solaris Live Upgrade Profile Keywords and Descriptions

    Profile Keyword 

    Description 

    (Required) install_type

    Defines the installation type. The value for a Solaris Flash differential archive is flash_update.

    (Required) archive_location

    Retrieves a Solaris Flash archive from a designated location. 

    (Optional) no_master_check

    Ignores checking the clone system to make sure that it was built from the original master system. 

    (Optional)local_customization

    Designates the directory where you have stored custom scripts to preserve local configurations on the clone system.  

    (Optional) forced_deployment

    Deletes all new files to bring the clone system to the expected state.  

    (Optional) no_content_check

    Ignores file-by-file validation that ensures the clone system is a duplicate of the master system . 

  3. Save the profile in a directory on the local system.

  4. Ensure that root owns the profile and that the permissions are set to 644.

  5. (Optional) Test the profile.

    To use the luupgrade command to install the differential archive, see Chapter 33, “Upgrading With Solaris Live Upgrade (Tasks)” in Solaris 9 Installation Guide, in the section, “To Upgrade With a Profile by Using Solaris Live Upgrade”.

Example 3–1 Solaris Live Upgrade Profile

The following example of a profile is to be used by Solaris Live Upgrade to install a differential archive on a clone system. Only files that are specified by the differential archive are added, deleted, or changed. The Solaris Flash archive is retrieved from an NFS server. Because the image was built by the original master system, the clone system is not checked for a valid system image. This profile is to be used with the Solaris Live Upgrade luupgrade command and the -u and -j options.

# profile keywords         profile values
# ----------------         -------------------
 install_type              flash_update
 archive_location          nfs installserver:/export/solaris/flasharchive/solaris9archive
 no_master_check