Solaris 10 10/08 Installation Guide: Solaris Live Upgrade and Upgrade Planning

Solaris Live Upgrade Requirements

Before you install and use Solaris Live Upgrade, become familiar with these requirements.

Solaris Live Upgrade System Requirements

Solaris Live Upgrade is included in the Solaris software. You need to install the Solaris Live Upgrade packages on your current OS. The release of the Solaris Live Upgrade packages must match the release of the OS you are upgrading to. For example, if your current OS is the Solaris 9 release and you want to upgrade to the Solaris 10 10/08 release, you need to install the Solaris Live Upgrade packages from the Solaris 10 10/08 release.

Table 3–1 lists releases that are supported by Solaris Live Upgrade.

Table 3–1 Supported Solaris Releases


Your Current Release	Compatible Upgrade Release
Solaris 8 OS	Solaris 8, 9, or any Solaris 10 release
Solaris 9 OS	Solaris 9 or any Solaris 10 release
Solaris 10 OS	Any Solaris 10 release

Installing Solaris Live Upgrade

You can install the Solaris Live Upgrade packages by using the following:

The pkgadd command. The Solaris Live Upgrade packages are SUNWlucfg, SUNWlur, and SUNWluu, and these packages must be installed in that order.
An installer on the Solaris Operating System DVD, the Solaris Software - 2 CD, or a network installation image.

Be aware that the following patches might need to be installed for the correct operation of Solaris Live Upgrade.

Description

For More Information

Caution: Correct operation of Solaris Live Upgrade requires that a limited set of patch revisions be installed for a particular OS version. Before installing or running Solaris Live Upgrade, you are required to install these patches.

x86 only –

If this set of patches is not installed, Solaris Live Upgrade fails and you might see the following error message. If you don't see the following error message, necessary patches still might not be installed. Always verify that all patches listed on the SunSolve info doc have been installed before attempting to install Solaris Live Upgrade.

ERROR: Cannot find or is not executable: 
</sbin/biosdev>.
ERROR: One or more patches required 
by Live Upgrade has not been installed.

The patches listed in info doc 206844 (formerly 72099) are subject to change at any time. These patches potentially fix defects in Solaris Live Upgrade, as well as fix defects in components that Solaris Live Upgrade depends on. If you experience any difficulties with Solaris Live Upgrade, please check and make sure that you have the latest Solaris Live Upgrade patches installed.

Ensure that you have the most recently updated patch list by consulting http://sunsolve.sun.com. Search for the info doc 206844 (formerly 72099) on the SunSolve web site.

If you are running the Solaris 8 or 9 OS, you might not be able to run the Solaris Live Upgrade installer. These releases do not contain the set of patches needed to run the Java 2 runtime environment. You must have the recommended patch cluster for the Java 2 runtime environment recommended to run the Solaris Live Upgrade installer and install the packages.

To install the Solaris Live Upgrade packages, use the pkgadd command. Or install, for the Java 2 runtime environment, the recommended patch cluster. The patch cluster is available on http://sunsolve.sun.com.

For instructions about installing the Solaris Live Upgrade software, see Installing Solaris Live Upgrade.

Required Packages

If you have problems with Solaris Live Upgrade, you might be missing packages. In the following table, check that your OS has the listed packages , which are required to use Solaris Live Upgrade.

For the Solaris 10 release:

If you install one of the following software groups, these software groups contain all the required Solaris Live Upgrade packages.
- Entire Solaris Software Group Plus OEM Support
- Entire Solaris Software Group
- Developer Solaris Software Group
- End User Solaris Software Group
If you install one of these Software Groups, then you might not have all the packages required to use Solaris Live Upgrade.
- Core System Support Software Group
- Reduced Network Support Software Group

For information about software groups, see Disk Space Recommendations for Software Groups in Solaris 10 10/08 Installation Guide: Planning for Installation and Upgrade.

Table 3–2 Required Packages for Solaris Live Upgrade


Solaris 8 Release	Solaris 9 Release	Solaris 10 Release
SUNWadmap	SUNWadmap	SUNWadmap
SUNWadmc	SUNWadmc	SUNWadmlib-sysid
SUNWlibC	SUNWadmfw	SUNWadmr
SUNWbzip	SUNWlibC	SUNWlibC
SUNWgzip	SUNWgzip	For Solaris 10 3/05 only: SUNWgzip
SUNWj2rt Note – The SUNWj2rt package is needed only under the following conditions: When you run the Solaris Live Upgrade installer to add Solaris Live Upgrade packages When you upgrade and use CD media	SUNWj2rt Note – The SUNWj2rt package is needed only under the following conditions: When you run the Solaris Live Upgrade installer to add Solaris Live Upgrade packages When you upgrade and use CD media	SUNWj5rt Note – The SUNWj5rt package is needed only under the following conditions: When you run the Solaris Live Upgrade installer to add Solaris Live Upgrade packages When you upgrade and use CD media

To check for packages on your system, type the following command.

% pkginfo package_name

Solaris Live Upgrade Disk Space Requirements

Follow general disk space requirements for an upgrade. See Chapter 4, System Requirements, Guidelines, and Upgrade (Planning), in Solaris 10 10/08 Installation Guide: Planning for Installation and Upgrade.

To estimate the file system size that is needed to create a boot environment, start the creation of a new boot environment. The size is calculated. You can then abort the process.

The disk on the new boot environment must be able to serve as a boot device. Some systems restrict which disks can serve as a boot device. Refer to your system's documentation to determine if any boot restrictions apply.

The disk might need to be prepared before you create the new boot environment. Check that the disk is formatted properly:

Identify slices large enough to hold the file systems to be copied.
Identify file systems that contain directories that you want to share between boot environments rather than copy. If you want a directory to be shared, you need to create a new boot environment with the directory put on its own slice. The directory is then a file system and can be shared with future boot environments. For more information about creating separate file systems for sharing, see Guidelines for Selecting Slices for Shareable File Systems.

Solaris Live Upgrade Requirements if Creating RAID-1 Volumes (Mirrors)

Solaris Live Upgrade uses Solaris Volume Manager technology to create a boot environment that can contain file systems that are RAID-1 volumes (mirrors). Solaris Live Upgrade does not implement the full functionality of Solaris Volume Manager, but does require the following components of Solaris Volume Manager.

Table 3–3 Required Components for Solaris Live Upgrade and RAID-1 Volumes


Requirement	Description	For More Information
You must create at least one state database and at least three state database replicas.	A state database stores information about disk about the state of your Solaris Volume Manager configuration. The state database is a collection of multiple, replicated database copies. Each copy is referred to as a state database replica. When a state database is copied, the replica protects against data loss from single points of failure.	For information about creating a state database, see Chapter 6, State Database (Overview), in Solaris Volume Manager Administration Guide.
Solaris Live Upgrade supports only a RAID-1 volume (mirror) with single-slice concatenations on the root (`/`) file system.	A concatenation is a RAID-0 volume. If slices are concatenated, the data is written to the first available slice until that slice is full. When that slice is full, the data is written to the next slice, serially. A concatenation provides no data redundancy unless it is contained in a RAID-1 volume A RAID—1 volume can be comprised of a maximum of three concatenations.	For guidelines about creating mirrored file systems, see Guidelines for Selecting Slices for Mirrored File Systems.