Activating a Boot Environment

Activating a boot environment makes it bootable on the next reboot of the system. You can also switch back quickly to the original boot environment if a failure occurs on booting the newly active boot environment. See Chapter 6, Failure Recovery: Falling Back to the Original Boot Environment (Tasks).

• See How to Activate a Boot Environment to activate a boot environment with the luactivate command.

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  Note - The first time you activate a boot environment, the luactivate command must be used.

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• See How to Activate a Boot Environment and Synchronize Files to activate a boot environment and force a synchronization of files.

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  Note - Files are synchronized with the first activation. If you switch boot environments after the first activation, files are not synchronized.

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• See x86: How to Activate a Boot Environment With the GRUB Menu to activate a boot environment with the GRUB, a feature of Oracle Solaris, menu on x86.

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  Note - A GRUB menu can facilitate switching from one boot environment to another. A boot environment appears in the GRUB menu after the first activation.

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Requirements and Limitations for Activating a Boot Environment

To successfully activate a boot environment, that boot environment must meet the following conditions:

• The boot environment must have a status of Complete. To find out how to check status, see Displaying the Status of All Boot Environments

• If the boot environment is not the current boot environment, you cannot have mounted the partitions of that boot environment by using the luumount or mount commands. See the lumount(1M) or mount(1M) man page.

• The boot environment that you want to activate cannot be involved in a comparison operation. For procedures, see Comparing Boot Environments. To reconfigure swap, see How to Create a Boot Environment and Reconfiguring Swap.

• If you want to reconfigure swap, make this change prior to booting the inactive boot environment. By default, all boot environments share the same swap devices.

How to Activate a Boot Environment

The following procedure switches a new boot environment to become the currently running boot environment.

1. To activate the boot environment, type:

   # /sbin/luactivate  BE-name

   BE-name

   Specifies the name of the boot environment that is to be activated

2. Reboot.

   # init 6

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   Caution - Use only the init or shutdown commands to reboot. If you use the reboot, halt, or uadmin commands, the system does not switch boot environments. The last-active boot environment is booted again.

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Example 5-14 Activating a Boot Environment

In this example, the second_disk boot environment is activated at the next reboot.

# /sbin/luactivate second_disk
# init 6

How to Activate a Boot Environment and Synchronize Files

The first time you boot from a newly created boot environment, 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. Live Upgrade does not perform this synchronization after the initial boot, unless you force synchronization with the luactivate command and the -s option.

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

1. To activate the boot environment, type:

   # /sbin/luactivate  -s BE-name

   -s

   Forces a synchronization of files between the last-active boot environment and the new boot environment. The first time that a boot environment is activated, the files between the boot environment are synchronized With subsequent activations, the files are not synchronized unless you use the -s option.

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   Caution - Use this option 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 Oracle Solaris 10 8/11 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 Oracle Solaris 10 8/11 files might not be compatible with the Solaris 9 files.

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   BE-name

   Specifies the name of the boot environment that is to be activated.

2. Reboot.

   # init 6

Example 5-15 Activating a Boot Environment

In this example, the second_disk boot environment is activated at the next reboot and the files are synchronized.

# /sbin/luactivate -s second_disk
# init 6

x86: Activating a Boot Environment With the GRUB Menu

A GRUB menu provides an optional method of switching between boot environments. The GRUB menu is an alternative to activating (booting) with the luactivate command. The cautions and limitations are as follows:

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Caution - After you have activated a boot environment, do not change the disk order in the BIOS. Changing the order might cause the GRUB menu to become invalid. If this problem occurs, changing the disk order back to the original state fixes the GRUB menu.

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• The first time you activate a boot environment, you must use the luactivate command. The next time you boot, that boot environment's name is displayed in the GRUB main menu. You can thereafter switch to this boot environment by selecting the appropriate entry in the GRUB menu. For information about how to activate a boot environment, see How to Activate a Boot Environment.

• The first time you activate a boot environment, files are synchronized between the current boot environment and the new boot environment. With subsequent activations, files are not synchronized. When you switch between boot environments with the GRUB menu, files also are not synchronized. You can force a synchronization when using the luactivate command with the -s option. For information about how to activate a boot environment and synchronize files, see How to Activate a Boot Environment and Synchronize Files.

• If a boot environment was created with the Solaris 8, Solaris 9, or Solaris 10 3/05 release, the boot environment must always be activated with the luactivate command. These older boot environments do not display on the GRUB menu. For information about how to activate a boot environment, see How to Activate a Boot Environment.

• The menu.lst file contains the information that is displayed in the GRUB menu. You can revise this file for the following reasons:

  • To add to the GRUB menu entries for operating systems other than the Oracle Solaris OS. For more information, see GRUB Based Booting (Overview) in Oracle Solaris 10 1/13 Installation Guide: Planning for Installation and Upgrade

  • To customize booting behavior. For example, you could change booting to verbose mode or change the default time that automatically boots the OS. For more information, see Booting an x86 Based System by Using GRUB (Task Map) in Oracle Solaris Administration: Basic Administration.

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  Note - If you want to change the GRUB menu, you need to locate the menu.lst file. For step-by-step instructions, see Chapter 13, Managing the Oracle Solaris Boot Archives (Tasks), in Oracle Solaris Administration: Basic Administration.

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  Caution - Do not use the GRUB menu.lst file to modify Live Upgrade entries. Modifications could cause Live Upgrade to fail. Although you can use the menu.lst file to customize booting behavior, the preferred method for customization is to use the eeprom command. If you use the menu.lst file to customize, the Oracle Solaris OS entries might be modified during a software upgrade. Changes to the file could be lost.

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x86: How to Activate a Boot Environment With the GRUB Menu

You can switch between two boot environments with the GRUB menu. Note the following limitations:

• The first activation of a boot environment must be done with the luactivate command. After the initial activation, the boot environment is displayed on the GRUB menu. The boot environment can then be booted from the GRUB menu.

• Switching to a boot environment with the GRUB menu bypasses synchronization. For more information about synchronizing files, see link Forcing a Synchronization Between Boot Environments.

• If a boot environment was created with the Solaris 8, Solaris 9, or Solaris 10 3/05 release, the boot environment must always be activated with the luactivate command. These older boot environments are not displayed on the GRUB menu.

1. Reboot the system.

   # init 6

   The GRUB main menu is displayed.

   In this example, the two operating systems are listed, Oracle Solaris and second_disk, which is a Live Upgrade boot environment. The failsafe entries are for recovery, if for some reason the primary OS does not boot.

   GNU GRUB version 0.95 (616K lower / 4127168K upper memory)
   +-------------------------------------------------------------------+
   |Solaris                                                            |
   |Solaris  failsafe                                                  |
   |second_disk                                                        |
   |second_disk failsafe                                               |
   +-------------------------------------------------------------------+
   Use the ^ and v keys to select which entry is highlighted. Press
   enter to boot the selected OS, 'e' to edit the commands before
   booting, or 'c' for a command-line.

2. Use the arrow key to select the desired boot environment and press Enter.

   The selected boot environment is booted and becomes the active boot environment.