AIX 4.3 --> 5.2 Upgrade...any tips or gotchas to share?

[noober]

Hi all. I am upgrading my OS from 4.3 to 5.2 this weekend and just wanted to open a thread for any thoughts or experiences that anyone would like to share that my be helpful.

 

[RiazAhamed]

Check the list of IBM hardware & it's minimum configuration which CAN RUN AIX 5L ver 5.2 OS SUCESSFULLY, from the IBM web site and make sure your IBM hardware (and micro codes) is compatible to run AIX 5L ver 5.2.

You may have to update the micro codes of your IBM hardware.
Once your IBM hardware (system) is found OK to run AIX 5L ver 5.2 operating system and make a complete backup of your AIX System.

Make sure all your existing applications WILL run without problems in AIX 5L ver 5.2 operating system. Check the existing licenses of applications.

Once EVERYTHING is OK, you can insert the first volume of AIX 5L ver 5.2 CD media into your AIX System. Shutdown all applications and perform system shutdown with fast reboot option.

We performed few migration installation from AIX ver 4.3.3 to AIX 5L ver 5.2 on pSeries 610 hardware. It went smoothly and we previewed the OS installation before performing the actual migration installation of the OS.

When the IBM System is booting, press multiple times the F4 or F5 key in your console, as soon as the "keyboard" symbol or word appears in the console display. Then you'll see few options provided by "Installation Assistant" program asking you to select Migration Installation; New Installation and Preservation Installation.

Note:Always "Preview" the installtion before you actually perform the installation.

Probably you'll select Migration Installation. Then select the option "List files/directories that will be removed". It'll show you the files/directories it's going to remove and you can backup the same, before you perform the actual migration installation.

Once you are done with your backup, repeat the above steps and this time you select "Migration Installation" with Preview option: NO and Accept License agreements: YES.

Usually it'll go fine.Good luck.

 

[noober]

Thanks RiazAhamed,
I have done the prelims per the documentation and verified that my hardware is supported and reviewed my 64bit executables, etc...but the "preview" option is news to me.

Can you please give me some more info on "previewing" the upgrade? I dont see this subject addressed in my "Installation Guide and Reference" manual and this is my first big upgrade on AIX boxes.

 

[RiazAhamed]

Yes, after booting from the first volume of AIX 5L ver 5.2 CD media, you can "Preview" a Migration Installation". Select the "Preview Only" option during the Migration Installation and it'll show you what are the files/directories that'll be removed/modified.

It so happen that, we performed Migration installation yesterday on a IBM pSeries 610 system from AIX v4.3.3 to AIX 5L ver 5.2 and it went very smooth.

Just check your DVD or CD drives for firmware updates and the micro-code updates, which are required for the AIX 5L ver 5.2 installation. Don't forget to install the bonus/additional software packages from the last volume of AIX 5L ver 5.2.

Good luck for a sucessfull installation

 

[bjverzal]

I've done a F50, F80, H80. This weekend, I'm doing our production S80 and another H80. As well, we've done "fresh" installs on 3 B80's. No serious problems. I did have a small issue with our first H80. bos.mp and the SSA device drivers did not install, so I had to do some system maintenance to fix it. It took about an hour.

There is an APAR with IBM. They strongly suggest that you unmirror the rootvg first, as there is a condition they cannot yet explain, where a migrated system will install but not boot. The only fix is to reload a previous mksysb and try it again.

Part of our upgrade procedures call for microcode updates as well - so we're doing those also.

BV

 

[noober]

Hello bjverzal and thanks for the response! Its interesting that you mention your ssa problem and I would love to hear more about it because I have a couple of ssa drawers via 7133-D40 and so you have grabbed my attention!

Is the apar you mention concerning the rootvg mirroring issue directly related to your ssa issue? Also, would you happen to have that apar number or a link?

I really appreciate the input and the fact that I'm not be treated like the total knucklehead!

 

[bjverzal]

Let me clarify my last post - after reading what I said, I realize I misconstrued some information.

There is no APAR. I opened a PMR with my problem.

As of the date of my H80 upgrade (Nov. 8/9, 2003), there was a known issue with upgrading a mirrored system. That condition in my case, did not apply. The symptoms were different. As of that date, there was no known fix for the issue, as IBM was having a hard time getting their arms around the exact cause of the problem.

My problem was simple: The devices.ssa.* filesets did not install for some unknown reason. E-mail me at bverzal@komatsuna.com and I'll send you the recovery steps I did to correct the problem.

BV

 

[noober]

Just emailed you!

 

[ANUK]

There is a major gotcha in the way ksh works in 5.2 compared to 4.3.3 (and most other popular flavours of unix come to think of it). It comes down to variable substitution within brackets.

On 4.3.3 the following returns as you would expect and displays "ok"

valid_envs="bst|cid|cmb|per|sys"
this_env=per

[[ $this_env = @($valid_envs) ]] && print ok

On aix 5L (5.1 or 5.2) this returns nothing.

A little futher testing shows there is also a problem (related) where a shell variable is substituted in a !( ) construct
$ y='xxx|yyy'
$ [[ xxx = !($y) ]] && print huh

on 4.3 this does not print huh, which is the correct action. On 5.2 it does print huh which is wrong.

We have an on-going call with IBM where they are maintaining that you cannot have variable substitution within the brackets. I am aware of work-arounds but when porting an application that uses ksh from 4.3.3 or any other unix to 5L, the last thing you should have to do is to modify your shell scripts to cope with this glorious "backwards enhancement" that 5L has to offer.

The best of it is that IBM are maintaining it is a feature to behaive as it does, even though it deviates AIX 5L from some of the open standards of other unix environments!

Any one else hit this bug yet, or have any thoughts on the subject?

 

[visvid]

Here’s something we have found out to be quite interesting. We are migrating our nodes to 5.1 from 4.3 by breaking the rootvg and doing an alternate disk installation.

We ran this test our CWS and several test nodes without any problems , there is a glitch which we resolved with a small script. ( see thread52-692182)

Today we ran into a big problem , and after hours of research we found that the following on a web site.

1. hd5(blv) must be at least 12MB. All PPs for hd5 MUST be physcially
placed on the outer edge.in other words, if rootvg has 8MB PPs, hd5 must
be 2 PPs both on the outer edge. You can create a new hd5 that satisfies
the requirements with: mklv -t boot -ae -y hd5 rootvg 2 hdisk0 and then
a bosboot -ad /dev/hdisk0
2. Attempting to migrate with a mirrored rootvg wil cause the migration
to hang at 95%
3. /etc/group must not contain any lines >2048 characters. this will
cause the migration to error on nearly every package to be installed with
sysck errros complaining about 'groupname' is not a know groupname for
'packagename'. in other words make sure that grpck -n ALL does not error,
and verify that you can vi /etc/group
4. broken lpp links can cause the migration to fail. run lppchks
first(-v -l -c)
5. have a good mksysb. you may very well need it


We found our hd5 was 8 Mb , so we have doubled it and we are now running the migrate via NIM to the node.

Hopefully we may be able to update the progress on this tomorrow

 

[visvid]

You may be glad to know that by increasing hd5 to 16mb , min is 12Mb the migrate has worked

 

[hdberger]

Hello,

i got today another problem by migrating from 4.3.3 ML10 and al little bit more with the fileset ifor_ls.base.cli. It is on 4.3.3.75 or close to and was not migrated to 5.2.0.10 by the CD's. Later, it was not possible to update it, because the installp wants to have bos.rte <v5

(((

Any hints?

Additional we had trouble with no GXT Adapter and the /usr/bin/pmd in /etc/inittab.
And of couse the rpm in /opt (early freeware instalation)

bye HD

 

[baggetta]

I went from 4.3.3 to 5.1L and had my smitty db get corrupted which was a pain to fix. IBM doesn't know how it happended either. I did a &quot;migration&quot; not a new install. Just make sure you have a good maksysb tape or cd, you may need it to recover like i had too. Also, if you have not installed full 4.3.3 filesets, when you go to 5.2, it will try to upgrade only those filesets installed. its good to check to see what you have installed at a lower level from 4.3.3. This was another problem i had, i had some lingering filesets from 4.3.0 and 4.3.2 which caused some minor problems.
r

 

[WiccaChic]

Hi baggetta,
I just upgraded one of my servers (production of course) oevr the weekend and my ODM got corrupted. It was very, very bad and compunded by an inexperienced tech at support. We could not even get the bootlist to take a change in maintenance mode so things were looking grim. We actually copied a stipped down version of ODM from ram (maintenance modes version) down to the box in order to get it to boot.

It was the worst upgrade I think I have ever been through. Did this 4 times on test boxes with no issues of course!

 

[Chapter11]

That rootvg mirror thing is probably what killed my first attempted upgrade of 4.3.3 to 5.1. We had to restore a mksysb, and I suspect there were some NVRAM changes because after the mksysb restore, I lost my tape drives and cdrom in AIX (but could still boot from them).

I ended up doing new/complete overwrite for that system (it was an Oracle server anyway, so not too big a deal).

 

[WiccaChic]

&quot;it was an Oracle server anyway, so not too big a deal&quot;
-lol

 

[Yegolev]

i think it is a wise decision to use NIM when doing this sort of thing, helps avoid missing filesets if set up properly. of course this requires a lot of setup and not everyone has a spare rs6k laying around...

IBM Certified -- AIX 4.3 Obfuscation

 

[Chapter11]

WiccaChic:

Import the oracle vg, create the oracle user and group, run &quot;rootpre&quot;, and the rest of it is Someone Else's Problem =)

 

[swtbart]

Hi, I've done 18 migrations to AIX5L 5.1 on almost every platform(F40, F50, H50, H70, H80, 6H1) even an old S390. Moreover you have post here, I do a clone of rootvg before migrating; so I can return to the old AIX4.3.3 in case of problems only changing the bootlist.
All you need are these packages installed:
bos.alt_disk_install.boot_images
bos.alt_disk_install.rte
and an empty bootable disk.
With this technique you can even &quot;rescue&quot; any data in the old rootvg when you've migrated to AIX5L