Forcing Solaris 8 upgrade intead of install

[jared71]

Hi,

I have an Ultra 60 running Solaris 7, which I would like to upgrade. Unfortunately, when I boot from the installation cd, it does not give me the option to upgrade, only format for fresh install.

Is there any way to force an upgrade over a fresh install?

Jared

 

[jared71]

This is waht Sun gave me.

Upgrade Troubleshooting Tips

Before starting an upgrade, please check for these common problems.

I. BACKUP!

Do a level 0 dump of all filesystems before doing anything under this document.

II. /etc/vfstab

- Comment out all NFS entries.
- Check for multiple swap entries. Comment out all except for one simple
disk based swap partition.
- Comment out all data (or non-O.S.) partitions.
- Make sure root partition is on slice 0
- Having entire O.S. in slice 0 is OK.
- Make sure there are no /dev/md/ devices. If any exist, see DISKSUITE section
below
- Make sure there are no /dev/vx/ devices. If any exist, see Volume Manager
section below

III. FSCK

- Make sure devices to fsck are 2 GB or smaller.
- Boot from cdrom and run fsck by hand to fix problems prior to upgrade.

IV. LINKS

- Watch out for links that use absolute paths. Upgrade will overwrite links
that it can't reference. This could cause the partition to run out of
disk space.
- Remove packages that will make changes to automounted directories.
- If symbolic links exist from /var/sadm, either restore the files on
the /var partition or do a full install.

V. /var

- Make sure /var is under root or a separate partition. /var should not be
a link.
- /var/sadm must not be a link or a separate partition.
Must be directly under /var.
- If symbolic links exist from /var/sadm, either restore the files on
the /var partition or do a full install.
- Run upgrade.chk to make sure /var/sadm/install/contents is not corrupt.
- Make sure /var/sadm/softinfo/INST_RELEASE exists and the contents look like;
OS=Solaris
VERSION=2.3
REV=0


------------------------------------------------------------------------------
DISKSUITE

DISKSUITE needs to be disabled on OS disks prior to the OS upgrade.

The actual upgrade procedures for DISKSUITE-systems are
found in different places depending on the version of DiskSuite.
You might want to check Appendix D of the Solstice Disksuite 3.0 through 4.1
Administration Guide. For DiskSuite 4.2 and above, there is a seperate
installation and upgrade document.

Make certain that the new version of Solaris that you are upgrading to
can support the version of DiskSuite you are running, otherwise it
may be necessary for you to upgrade DiskSuite as well.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
VOLUME MANAGER

Volume Manager must be disabled on OS disks prior to upgrade of the OS.
Refer to the Volume Manager Installation Manual for complete procedures
for upgrading Solaris with Volume Manager. Even if you are not upgrading
Volume Manager, it is necessary to perform some upgrade functions with
Volume Manager - these steps are documented in the VxVM Installation
Guide.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PFUPGRADE

You can run pfupgrade program CAREFULLY when the target O.S. is
Solaris 2.5.1 and below. See Infodoc 11374 for details.

If you are upgrading to Solaris 2.6 , you can run pfinstall.
See Infodoc 15885 for details.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If the steps outlined above do not help, you will have to do a full install.

 

[bigkatt]

Jared71,
Are you using disk 1 of 2 or are you using the web start cd? You should be able to skip the web start cd and go to disk 1. This should give you the option to upgrade your systems. A good backup is always important before you upgrade.

BK

 

[jared71]

Thanks! I'll try that.

-jared

 

[josel]

Hi,

could you kindly add links to the documents on how to upgrade when Disksuite 4.1/4.2 is already in use?

Regards,
i

 

[Guest_imported]

I would seriously consider using Live Upgrade. It can be found on the Solaris 8 cd disk 2 of 2 in ./products/EA/Live_upgrade . run the installer to install Live upgrade. The user guide is on the Sun website. Its a doddle to use, it takes a copy of your current OS (so you need a free partition) and upgrades it whilst you are still running under your current environment. it then allows you to activate that partition , reboot and hey presto your at Solaris 8. I did it today. It was a sinch.
If it all goes horribly wrong you just boot off your origonal partition.