Tek-Tips is the largest IT community on the Internet today!
Members share and learn making Tek-Tips Forums the best source of peer-reviewed technical information on the Internet!
-
Congratulations Chris Miller on being selected by the Tek-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!
Alternate disk install
- Thread starter fjw999
- Start date
Suppose you have hdisk0 and hdisk1, AiX 4.3 installed on hdisk0.
Now ensure that AiX 4.3 does not use hdisk1 as PV in any volume group.
Shut down the box, and on the next start enter SMS menu. On the multiboot options select your CD-ROM, and put in AiX 5.2 CD1.
On the beginning of the installation select "Overwrite and fresh install", and choose only hdisk1 as target.
Note: you should carefully identify your disks based on SCSI ID-s, not only hdisk names!
Install new OS from CD.
In the SMS menu - most newer machines can - use multiboot options to enable selecting boot disks on power up.
In general steps, that's it.
Oh, one more: make a FULL BACKUP of your original OS!!! (mksysb, savevg, etc.)
Good luck!
--Trifo
Now ensure that AiX 4.3 does not use hdisk1 as PV in any volume group.
Shut down the box, and on the next start enter SMS menu. On the multiboot options select your CD-ROM, and put in AiX 5.2 CD1.
On the beginning of the installation select "Overwrite and fresh install", and choose only hdisk1 as target.
Note: you should carefully identify your disks based on SCSI ID-s, not only hdisk names!
Install new OS from CD.
In the SMS menu - most newer machines can - use multiboot options to enable selecting boot disks on power up.
In general steps, that's it.
Oh, one more: make a FULL BACKUP of your original OS!!! (mksysb, savevg, etc.)
Good luck!
--Trifo
- Thread starter
- #3
Well... Think, how to run the installer system... Basically it is not possible.
It might be possible to use an mksysb backup and restore it to the empty disk while the system is running, but I would not recommend to do so.
Is it a production system and you want to minimize the downtime for an OS change? Or what? If you have only one machine, it will not help you.
--Trifo
RodKnowlton
MIS
- Apr 26, 2000
- 1,005
You can do a point release or maintenance level "upgrade" to an alternate disk while running, but not a version upgrade.
You can, however, clone your current system to the alternate disk using the alt_disk_install -C flag, boot from the other disk, and migrate. This makes backing out a simple matter of changing the bootlist.
The man page gives a pretty good description of what's possible.
If you have NIM on a 5.1 or higher machine other than the one you're upgrading, you actually can migrate a 4.3 machine to 5.* on an alternate disk while running. Or at least you're supposed to be able to. I haven't had experience with that particular scenario.
Rod Knowlton
IBM Certified Advanced Technical Expert pSeries and AIX 5L
CompTIA Linux+
CompTIA Security+
You can, however, clone your current system to the alternate disk using the alt_disk_install -C flag, boot from the other disk, and migrate. This makes backing out a simple matter of changing the bootlist.
The man page gives a pretty good description of what's possible.
If you have NIM on a 5.1 or higher machine other than the one you're upgrading, you actually can migrate a 4.3 machine to 5.* on an alternate disk while running. Or at least you're supposed to be able to. I haven't had experience with that particular scenario.
Rod Knowlton
IBM Certified Advanced Technical Expert pSeries and AIX 5L
CompTIA Linux+
CompTIA Security+
See
Mike
"A foolproof method for sculpting an elephant: first, get a huge block of marble, then you chip away everything that doesn't look like an elephant.
Mike
"A foolproof method for sculpting an elephant: first, get a huge block of marble, then you chip away everything that doesn't look like an elephant.
- Thread starter
- #7
RodKnowlton
MIS
- Apr 26, 2000
- 1,005
Yes, you can, according to IBM (I haven't personally done it). NIM will actually take care of the cloning for you.
Instructions are in the AIX 5L Installation Guide.
Rod Knowlton
IBM Certified Advanced Technical Expert pSeries and AIX 5L
CompTIA Linux+
CompTIA Security+
Instructions are in the AIX 5L Installation Guide.
Rod Knowlton
IBM Certified Advanced Technical Expert pSeries and AIX 5L
CompTIA Linux+
CompTIA Security+
- Status