Solaris

This is probably a dumb question, but all my searches aren't turning up an answer. I need to upgrade a system from u5 to u9. It has UFS root file systems separated into different slices for /, /var, and /export/home. I've upgraded to a later release once in the past using LU, but in this case I can't use LU to do it since the root file systems are UFS and there isn't another disk I can use.

This isn't a question regarding patching. It's regarding upgrading the Solaris 10 OS from u3, u5, etc... to u9.

Thanks!

Hello christr.

You did not ask any questions, only explained a situation.

I am going to assume the question is:

The answer is: With careful planning you might be able to do it. If worst comes to worst, we can do the following:
1. Make a backup of the system on another system on the network.
2. Reformat the disks via boot from CD.
3. Restore the system to the ZFS disks
4. Perform an upgrade
5. Ensure that the disks are bootable.

If you do have mirrored root disks, then this whole thing becomes very very easy and you will have almost no downtime at all! (Note to all: ALWAYS but ALWAYS mirror your root disk)

There may be many shortcuts, depending on just exactly how much disk space you have free and how much downtime you are willing to incur, and depending on how much you are willing to compromise the ideal configuration (whole disks managed entirely by ZFS)

For a start I would like to see the output of df -kl. If you use any disk management (SVM, VXVM, ???) please also dump the outputs (metastat -p, or whatever)

I also want to see the partition tables of all the disks, eg:

Code:

for X in $( ls /dev/dsk/*s2 ); do prtvtoc $X; done

And if you have unmounted partitions, then please let me know whether any of those are used as raw disk partitions by, for example, a database or other application.

Thanks Hartz, but that isn't exactly what I was asking.

I can't change it from UFS, and LU isn't an option in this environment. I simply need to know how to upgrade to another release without having to use LU. I mentioned UFS because just so anyone answering will know things such as ZFS snapshots aren't an option.

make a backup of your system (flasharchive or ufsdump). boot from the latest solaris release (or that one you wish to use) and do an upgrade (the installer asks you "inital install" or "upgrade"). patch the new system with the latest patch cluster. enjoy (if all went fine).

ok, I know that option from the boot DVD... thanks. I was wondering if there was a regular command to do it from. I wish I could find some documentation on this, as I'm sure there must be some out there. How would I do it from jumpstart. I have a jumpstart I setup, and use all the time, but I don't know how I would use it to upgrade a release.

Thanks!

You can still use Live Upgrade if your disks are mirrored, or even if you just have a few GB free space on a disk somewhere. The disks must be truly near completely full before I will give up!

Note: Not wanting to convert to ZFS really just makes it easier - my answer still applies, just ignore the bits about converting the file system. In this case, Reformatting and repartitioning becomes optional, depending on what you want to achieve.


Can you send the outputs so we can check for unpartitioned space?

Check out release notes for the new Solaris 10 8/11 release , you might find an answer to your question.
Solaris 10 8/11 release systems can now also be installed from a Solaris ZFS Flash Archive.