Solaris 10 Installation Guide: Solaris Live Upgrade and Upgrade Planning

ProcedureTo Activate a Boot Environment (Character User 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. “Synchronize” means that certain critical 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 request to do so when prompted to force a synchronization.

For more information about synchronization, see Synchronizing Files Between Boot Environments.


x86 only –

Starting with the Solaris 10 1/06 release, you can use the GRUB menu to switch boot environments. See x86: Activating a Boot Environment With the GRUB Menu).


Steps
  1. From the Solaris Live Upgrade main menu, select Activate.

  2. Type the name of the boot environment to make active:


    Name of Boot Environment: Solaris_10
    Do you want to force a Live Upgrade sync operations: no
    
  3. You can either continue or force a synchronization of files.

    • Press Return to continue.

      The first time that the boot environment is booted, files are automatically synchronized.

    • You can force a synchronization of files, but use this feature with caution. Operating systems on each boot environment must be compatible with files that are being synchronized. To force a synchronization of files, type:


      Do you want to force a Live Upgrade sync operations: yes
      

      Caution – Caution –

      Use a forced synchronization with great care, because you might not be aware of or in control of changes that might have occurred in the last-active boot environment. For example, if you were running Solaris 10 software on your current boot environment and booted back to a Solaris 9 release with a forced synchronization, files could be changed on the Solaris 9 release. Because files are dependent on the release of the OS, the boot to the Solaris 9 release could fail because the Solaris 10 files might not be compatible with the Solaris 9 files.


  4. Press F3 to begin the activation process.

  5. Press Return to continue.

    The new boot environment is activated at the next reboot.

  6. To activate the inactive boot environment, reboot:


    # init 6