The smpatch Live Upgrade Support Feature

This new feature enables users to install all updates in multi-user mode, instead of deferring the updates that require a system-restart to single-user mode.

To activate live upgrade support, you can use the -b boot-env option with the smpatch add, smpatch remove, or smpatch update commands, where -b is the boot environment and the value boot-env is the name of the specific boot environment. The command syntax is as follows:.

smpatch -add -b boot-env

The current boot environment is copied to the specified boot environment. The chosen updates are applied to the specified boot environment. The specified environment will be activated so that on reboot, the system will run the newly updated boot environment instead of the current one.

After you run the smpatch command with the selected option, a message appears on the command-line prompting you to restart the system at a convenient time.

If you run the smpatch command once again specifying the same boot environment, the changes made by any earlier command are lost. The system applies the most recent set of changes. This issue does not apply when you use the smpatch -update command, because this command installs the complete set of updates once again.