Solaris 10 8/07 Installation Guide: Solaris Live Upgrade and Upgrade Planning

Guidelines for Upgrading

When you upgrade a boot environment with the latest OS, you do not affect the active boot environment. The new files merge with the inactive boot environment critical file systems, but shareable file systems are not changed.

You can upgrade when RAID-1 volumes are installed, or if non-global zones are installed, or you can install a Solaris Flash:

Upgrading a System With Packages or Patches

You can use Solaris Live Upgrade to add patches and packages to a system. Solaris Live Upgrade creates a copy of the currently running system. This new boot environment can be upgraded or you can add packages or patches. When you use Solaris Live Upgrade, the only downtime the system incurs is that of a reboot. You can add patches and packages to a new boot environment with the luupgrade command.


Caution – Caution –

When 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. If a package violates these guidelines, the package can cause the package-addition software to fail or alter the active boot environment during an upgrade.

For more information about packaging requirements, see Appendix B, Additional SVR4 Packaging Requirements (Reference).


Table 5–2 Upgrading a Boot Environment With Packages and Patches

Type of Installation 

Description 

For More Information 

Adding patches to a boot environment.  

Create a new boot environment and use the luupgrade command with the -t option.

To Add Patches to a Network Installation Image on a Boot Environment

Adding packages to a boot environment. 

Use the luupgrade command with the -p option.

To Add Packages to a Network Installation Image on a Boot Environment