Chapter 2 Overview of Planning for a Solaris Installation or Upgrade

This chapter provides you with information about decisions you need to make before you install or upgrade the Solaris operating environment. This chapter contains the following sections:

• Task Map: Installing or Upgrading the Solaris Software

• Initial Installation or Upgrade

• System Requirements

• Installing From the Network or From CDs

Task Map: Installing or Upgrading the Solaris Software

The following task map is an overview of the steps necessary to install or upgrade the Solaris operating environment. Use this task map to identify all of the of the decisions that you need to make to complete the most efficient installation for your environment.

Initial Installation or Upgrade

You can choose to perform an initial installation or, if your system is already running the Solaris operating environment, you can upgrade your system.

Initial Installation

An initial installation overwrites the system's disk with the new version of the Solaris operating environment. If your system is not running the Solaris operating environment, you must perform an initial installation.

If the system is already running the Solaris operating environment, you can choose to perform an initial installation. If you want to preserve any local modifications, before you install, you must back up the local modifications. After you complete the installation, you can restore the local modifications.

You can use any of the Solaris installation methods to perform an initial installation. For detailed information about the different Solaris installation methods, refer to Chapter 3, Choosing a Solaris Installation Method.

Upgrade

An upgrade merges the new version of the Solaris operating environment with the existing files on the system's disk. An upgrade saves as many modifications as possible that you have made to the previous version of the Solaris operating environment.

You can upgrade any system that is running the Solaris 2.5.1, Solaris 2.6, or Solaris 7 software. You can upgrade to a Solaris 8 Update release if your system is running the Solaris 8 software. Type the following command to see the version of Solaris software that is running on your system:

$ uname -a

You can upgrade the Solaris operating environment by using the following installation methods.

Use the smosservice patch to upgrade diskless clients. For detailed instructions, refer to Solaris 8 System Administration Supplement or to smosservice(1M).

You cannot upgrade your system to a software group that is not 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.

If you are already running the Solaris 8 operating environment and have installed individual patches, upgrading to a Solaris 8 Update release causes the following:

• Any patches that were supplied as part of the Solaris 8 Update release 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 the Solaris 8 Update release are removed.

You can use the Patch Analyzer to determine which patches, if any, will be removed by upgrading to the Solaris 8 Update release. For detailed instructions about using the Patch Analyzer, refer to Upgrading to a Solaris Update Release.

System Requirements

Verify that your system meets the requirements to install or upgrade to the Solaris operating environment.

Memory Requirement

The system must have a minimum of 64 Mbytes of memory to install or upgrade to the Solaris operating environment.

System Requirements for Using the Solaris Web Start Program

Slice Requirements for Upgrading

To use the Solaris Web Start program to upgrade, you must have a slice on the disk that does not store files. The swap slice is preferred, but you can use any slice that is not located in any of the “upgradable” root slices that are listed in /etc/vfstab. The size of this slice must be at least 512 Mbytes.

You cannot use the Solaris Web Start program to upgrade to Solaris 8 from the Solaris 2.5.1, Solaris 2.6, or Solaris 7 operating environments. The Solaris Web Start installation method requires a separate 10 Mbyte IA boot partition that was not required in previous Solaris releases. You must use the Solaris 8 Interactive Installation Program upgrade.

You can use the Solaris Web Start program to upgrade from the Solaris 8 release to a Solaris 8 Update release.

x86: System Disk Partitions

The Solaris Web Start program requires two fdisk partitions on the system disk to perform an installation or upgrade.

• Solaris fdisk partition

  This is the typical Solaris fdisk partition. If you do not have a Solaris fdisk partition on your system, the Solaris Web Start program prompts you to create one.

  ---

  Caution –

  If you change the size of an existing fdisk partition, all data on that partition is automatically deleted. Back up your data before you create a Solaris fdisk partition.

  ---

• x86 boot fdisk partition

  This is a 10 Mbyte fdisk partition that enables the Intel architecture to boot the miniroot that is placed on the newly created swap slice that is located on the Solaris fdisk partition.

  ---

  Caution –

  Do not create the x86 boot partition manually.

  The Solaris Web Start installation program creates the x86 boot partition, removing 10–Mbytes from the Solaris fdisk partition. By allowing the installation program to create the x86 boot partition, you prevent any existing fdisk partitions from being altered.

  ---

x86: Logical Block Addressing Requirement

The BIOS and SCSI driver for the default boot disk must support Logical Block Addressing (LBA). LBA enables the machine to boot beyond the 1024–cylinder limit and across Solaris disk slices.

To determine if your system supports LBA, type:

# prtconf -pv | grep -i lba

If the BIOS and SCSI driver for the default boot disk support LBA, the following message appears.

lba-access-ok:

If the SCSI driver for the default boot disk does not support LBA, the following message appears.

no-bef-lba-access

If the default boot disk BIOS and SCSI driver do not support LBA, use the Solaris 8 Interactive Installation Program on the Solaris 8 Software 1 of 2 CD to install or upgrade to the Solaris 8 operating environment.

Installing From the Network or From CDs

The Solaris software is distributed on CDs so that you can install or upgrade systems that have access to a CD-ROM drive.

If you have systems that do not have local CD-ROM drives or if you are installing several systems and do not want to insert the Solaris 8 Software CDs into every local CD-ROM drive to install Solaris, you can set up the systems to install from remote Solaris 8 Software CD images.

You can use all of the Solaris installation methods to install a system from the network. However, by installing systems from the network with the Web Start Flash installation feature or with a custom JumpStart installation, you can centralize and automate the installation process in a large enterprise. For more details about the different installation methods, refer to Chapter 3, Choosing a Solaris Installation Method.

Installing the Solaris software from the network requires initial setup. For detailed instructions on preparing to install from the network, refer to Chapter 8, Preparing to Install Solaris Software From the Network.