Chapter 4 System Requirements, Guidelines, and Upgrade (Planning)

This chapter describes system requirements to install or upgrade to the Solaris OS. General guidelines for planning the disk space and default swap space allocation are also provided. This chapter contains the following sections:

• System Requirements and Recommendations

• Allocating Disk and Swap Space

• Upgrade Planning

• Locale Values

• Platform Names and Groups

• x86: Partitioning Recommendations

• How to Find the Version of the Solaris OS That Your System Is Running

System Requirements and Recommendations

You can choose to install the software with a GUI or with or without a windowing environment. If there is sufficient memory, the GUI is displayed by default. Other environments are displayed by default if memory is insufficient for the GUI. You can override defaults with the nowin or text boot options. But, you are limited by the amount of memory in your system or by installing remotely. Also if the Solaris installation program does not detect a video adapter, it automatically displays in a console-based environment. Table 4–2 describes these environments and lists minimal memory requirements for displaying them.

Allocating Disk and Swap Space

Before you install the Solaris software, you can determine if your system has enough disk space by doing some high-level planning.

General Disk Space Planning and Recommendations

Planning disk space is different for everyone. Consider allocating space for the following conditions, depending on your needs.

Disk Space Recommendations for Software Groups

The Solaris software groups are collections of Solaris packages. Each software group includes support for different functions and hardware drivers.

• For an initial installation, you select the software group to install, based on the functions that you want to perform on the system.

• For an upgrade, you must upgrade to a software group that is installed on the system. For example, if you previously installed the End User Solaris Software Group on your system, you cannot use the upgrade option to upgrade to the Developer Solaris Software Group. However, during the upgrade you can add software to the system that is not part of the currently installed software group.

When you are installing the Solaris software, you can choose to add or remove packages from the Solaris software group that you selected. When you are selecting which packages to add or remove, you need to know about software dependencies and how the Solaris software is packaged.

The following figure shows the grouping of software packages. Reduced Network Support contains the minimal number of packages and Entire Solaris Software Group Plus OEM Support contains all the packages.

Figure 4–1 Solaris Software Groups

Table 4–4 lists the Solaris software groups and the recommended amount of disk space that you need to install each group.

The disk space recommendations in Table 4–4 include space for the following items.

• Swap space

• Patches

• Additional software packages

You might find that the software groups require less disk space than the amount that is listed in this table.

Upgrade Planning

You can upgrade a system by using one of three different upgrade methods: Solaris Live Upgrade, the Solaris installation program, and custom JumpStart.

Upgrade Limitations

The following table lists limitations when you upgrade a system under some conditions.

Upgrade Programs

You can perform a standard interactive upgrade with the Solaris installation program or an unattended upgrade with the custom JumpStart installation method. Solaris Live Upgrade enables you to upgrade a running system.

Installing a Solaris Flash Archive Instead of Upgrading

The Solaris Flash installation feature provides a method of creating a copy of the whole installation from a master system that can be replicated on many clone systems. This copy is called a Solaris Flash archive. You can install an archive by using any installation program.

A Solaris Flash archive cannot be properly created when a non-global zone is installed. The Solaris Flash feature is not compatible with Solaris Zones partitioning technology. If you create a Solaris Flash archive, the resulting archive is not installed properly when the archive is deployed under these conditions:

• The archive is created in a non-global zone

• The archive is created in a global zone that has non-global zones installed

Creating an Archive That Contains Large Files

The default copy method that is used when you create a Solaris Flash archive is the cpio utility. Individual file sizes cannot be greater than 4 Gbytes. If you have large individual files, the flarcreate command with the -L pax option uses the pax utility to create an archive without limitations on individual file sizes. Individual file sizes can be greater than 4 Gbytes.

For information about installing an archive, see the following table.

Upgrading With Disk Space Reallocation

The upgrade option in the Solaris installation program and the upgrade keyword in the custom JumpStart program provide the ability to reallocate disk space. This reallocation automatically changes the sizes of the disk slices. You can reallocate disk space if the current file systems do not have enough space for the upgrade. For example, file systems might need more space for the upgrade for the following reasons:

• The Solaris software group that is currently installed on the system contains new software in the new release. Any new software that is included in a software group is automatically selected to be installed during the upgrade.

• The size of the existing software on the system has increased in the new release.

The auto-layout feature attempts to reallocate the disk space to accommodate the new size requirements of the file system. Initially, auto-layout attempts to reallocate space, based on a set of default constraints. If auto-layout cannot reallocate space, you must change the constraints on the file systems.

Auto-layout does not have the ability to “grow” file systems. Auto-layout reallocates space by the following process:

1. Backing up required files on the file systems that need to change.

2. Repartitioning the disks on the basis of the file system changes.

3. Restoring the backup files before the upgrade happens.

• If you are using the Solaris installation program, and auto-layout cannot determine how to reallocate the disk space, you must use the custom JumpStart program to upgrade.

• If you are using the custom JumpStart method to upgrade and you create an upgrade profile, disk space might be a concern. If the current file systems do not contain enough disk space for the upgrade, you can use the backup_media and layout_constraint keywords to reallocate disk space. For an example of how to use the backup_media and layout_constraint keywords in a profile, refer to Profile Examples in Solaris 10 5/08 Installation Guide: Custom JumpStart and Advanced Installations.

Using the Patch Analyzer When Upgrading

The Patch Analyzer performs an analysis on your system if you want to upgrade to one of these releases that follow the initial Solaris 10 3/05 release.

• Solaris 10 1/06 release

• Solaris 10 6/06 release

If you are already running the Solaris OS and have installed individual patches, upgrading to a subsequent Solaris 10 release causes the following:

• Any patches that were supplied as part of one of the releases noted above are reapplied to your system. You cannot back out these patches.

• Any patches that were previously installed on your system and are not included in one of the releases noted above are removed.

You can use the Patch Analyzer to determine which patches, if any, will be removed. For detailed instructions about using the Patch Analyzer, refer to Appendix C, Using the Patch Analyzer When Upgrading (Tasks), in Solaris 10 5/08 Installation Guide: Solaris Live Upgrade and Upgrade Planning.

Backing Up And Restarting Systems For an Upgrade

Backing up your existing file systems before you upgrade to the Solaris OS is highly recommended. If you copy file systems to removable media, such as tape, you can safeguard against data loss, damage, or corruption.

• For detailed instructions to back up your system, refer to Chapter 23, Backing Up and Restoring File Systems (Overview), in System Administration Guide: Devices and File Systems.

• To backup your system when non-global zones are installed, see Chapter 26, Solaris Zones Administration (Overview), in System Administration Guide: Solaris Containers-Resource Management and Solaris Zones.

In previous releases, the restart mechanism enabled you to continue an upgrade after a loss of power or other similar problem. Starting with the Solaris 10 8/07 release, the restart mechanism is unreliable. If you have a problem, your upgrade might not restart.

Planning Network Security

Starting with the Solaris 10 11/06 release, you have the option during an initial installation to change the network security settings so that all network services, except Secure Shell, are disabled or restricted to respond to local requests only. This option minimizes the potential vulnerabilities a remote attacker might try to exploit. In addition, this option provides a base for customers to enable only the services they require. This security option is only available during an initial installation, not during an upgrade. An upgrade maintains any set services that were previously set. If necessary, you can restrict network services after an upgrade by using the netservices command.

Depending on the installation program you are using, you can select to restrict network services or keep the services enabled by default:

• For the Solaris interactive installation, you can select the option of enabling network services by default as in previous Solaris releases. Or, you can select the option to restrict network services. For a detailed description of hands-on installations, see Chapter 2, Installing With the Solaris Installation Program (Tasks), in Solaris 10 5/08 Installation Guide: Basic Installations.

• For an automated JumpStart installation, you can set this security restriction by using a new keyword, service_profile in the sysidcfg file. For further information about this keyword, see service_profile Keyword in Solaris 10 5/08 Installation Guide: Network-Based Installations.

Restricted Security Specifics

If you choose to restrict network security, numerous services are fully disabled. Other services are still enabled, but these services are restricted to local connections only. The Secure Shell remains fully enabled.

For example, the following table lists network services that, for the Solaris 10 11/06 release, are restricted to local connections.

Revising Security Settings After Installation

With the restricted network security feature, all of the affected services are controlled by the Service Management Framework (SMF). Any individual network service can be enabled after an initial installation by using the svcadm and svccfg commands.

The restricted network access is achieved by invoking the netservices command from the SMF upgrade file found in /var/svc/profile. The netservices command can be used to switch the service startup behavior.

To disable network services manually, run the following command:

# netservices limited

This command can be used on upgraded systems, where no changes are made by default. This command can also be used to re-establish the restricted state after enabling individual services.

Similarly, default services can be enabled as they were in previous Solaris releases by running the following command:

# netservices open

For further information about revising security settings, see How to Create an SMF Profile in System Administration Guide: Basic Administration. See also the following man pages.

• netservices(1M)

• svcadm(1M)

• svccfg(1M) commands.

Locale Values

As a part of your installation, you can preconfigure the locale that you want the system to use. A locale determines how online information is displayed in a specific language and specific region. A language might also include more than one locale to accommodate regional differences, such as differences in the format of date and time, numeric and monetary conventions, and spelling.

You can preconfigure the system locale in a custom JumpStart profile or in the sysidcfg file.

Platform Names and Groups

When you are adding clients for a network installation, you must know your system architecture (platform group). If you are writing a custom JumpStart installation rules file, you need to know the platform name.

Some examples of platform names and groups follow. For a full list of SPARC based systems, see Solaris Sun Hardware Platform Guide at http://docs.sun.com/.

On a running system, you can also use the uname -i command to determine a system's platform name or the uname -m command to determine a system's platform group.

x86: Partitioning Recommendations

When using the Solaris OS on x86 based systems, follow these guidelines for partitioning your system.

The Solaris installation program uses a default boot-disk partition layout. These partitions are called fdisk partitions. An fdisk partition is a logical partition of a disk drive that is dedicated to a particular operating system on x86 based systems. To install the Solaris software, you must set up at least one Solaris fdisk partition on an x86 based system. x86 based systems allow up to four different fdisk partitions on a disk. These partitions can be used to hold individual operating systems. Each operating system must be located on a unique fdisk partition. A system can only have one Solaris fdisk partition per disk.

Default Boot-Disk Partition Layout Preserves the Service Partition

The Solaris installation program uses a default boot-disk partition layout to accommodate the diagnostic or Service partition. If your system currently includes a diagnostic or Service partition, the default boot-disk partition layout enables you to preserve this partition.

If you install the Solaris OS on an x86 based system that does not currently include a diagnostic or Service partition, the installation program does not create a new diagnostic or Service partition by default. If you want to create a diagnostic or Service partition on your system, see your hardware documentation.

How to Find the Version of the Solaris OS That Your System Is Running

To see the version of Solaris software that is running on your system, type either of the following commands.

$ uname -a

The cat command provides more detailed information.

$ cat /etc/release