Upgrade Issues

Cannot Use Solaris Web Start 3.0 to Upgrade to the Solaris 8 Operating Environment

You cannot use Solaris Web Start 3.0 on the Solaris 8 Installation CD to upgrade x86-based systems from the Solaris 2.6 or 7 operating environments to the Solaris 8 operating environment because of the x86 boot partition requirement. Use the Solaris Software 1 of 2 CD to upgrade to the Solaris 8 operating environment on x86-based systems.

Solaris Easy Access Server (SEAS)

The applications in Solaris Easy Access Server are not certified to run in the Solaris 8 operating environment. If you are running applications from SEAS, you must install the Solaris 8 Admin Pack to ensure that those applications will run properly in the Solaris 8 operating environment.

Several of the applications that are included in SEAS releases are now part of the Solaris 8 operating environment:

• Solaris Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM) Services

• Solaris Print Manager

• Netscape^TM Communicator

• Java Development Kit (JDK^TM)

• Solstice^TM DiskSuite^TM

The following SEAS applications have not been certified to run in the Solaris 8 operating environment:

• Solstice Internet Mail Server

• Sun Directory Services

• Sun WebServer^TM

• Solaris PC NetLink

• SunScreen^TM SKIP

• Solstice NFS Client

• Java IDL

• Solstice AutoClient^TM

• Solaris Data Backup Utility

Priority Paging Is Not Needed With the New Solaris 8 Caching Architecture

The Solaris 8 operating environment introduces a new file system caching architecture, which subsumes the Solaris 7 Priority Paging functionality. The system variable priority_paging should not be set in the Solaris 8 operating environment, and should be removed from the directory /etc/system when systems are upgraded to the Solaris 8 operating environment.

The new caching architecture removes most of the pressure on the virtual memory system that resulted from file system activity. As a result, the new caching architecture changes the dynamics of the memory paging statistics, which makes observing system memory characteristics simpler. However, several of the statistics report significantly different values, which should be considered when analyzing memory behavior or setting performance monitoring thresholds. The most notable differences are:

• The number of page reclaims is higher, which should be considered normal operation during heavy file system activity.

• The amount of free memory is higher because the free memory count now includes a large component of the file system cache.

• Scan rates are almost zero unless there is a shortage of system-wide available memory. Scanning is no longer used to replace the free list during normal file system I/O.