Solaris 10 LU question 2

[gallows]

Doing a live upgrade from Sol 9 to Sol 10. I have the Sun Docs and am using them. I also found a few step by step guides via Google that look real good and is much easier to follow.

I have an available disk to put Sol 10 on and will put the boot env on it etc. The guides I found have you make the spare disk identical to the current Sol 9 disk. My current system is broken out with /var, /opt, /export, /apps.

The Sun docs does not have that step in it and does not mention it.

So my question is "Is having the identical disk layout on both drives necessary?"

Yes, this is my first exposure to Sol 10 other then me trying to install it from scratch in the lab. Then I only had the choice of having var on a separate partition and nothing else. This is the reason for my question.

Thanks!!

 

[djr111]

hmmm....im not quite sure that is true, in regards to having your alternate boot environment the same as your current.

You have the ability to modify your alternate boot environment, EG:

lets say you have a / on your primary and /var is under /. But in your alternate boot environment you want to make /var a seperate filesystem. this is easily done. you just do:

lucreate   –A "Newark Campus - sr-unwk18-07-n s10_3 -m /:/dev/md/dsk/d9:mirror,ufs –m \
  /:/dev/dsk/c2t0d0s3,/dev/md/dsk/d10:attach –m \
 /:/dev/dsk/c2t1d0s3,/dev/md/dsk/d11:attach \
–m  /var:/dev/md/dsk/d15:mirror,ufs –m \ 
 /var:/dev/dsk/c2t0d0s6,/dev/md/dsk/d16:attach –m \
  /var:/dev/dsk/c2t1d0s6,/dev/md/dsk/d17:attach

in short, if you intend on splitting up your /, you use the "-m" option as seen above.

Note that you still need to modify the partition table of the alternate disk to your liking before you run lucreate.



Alternatively, you can also do the following scenario, if you have a seperate /export/home filesystem, but you want to merge it to be under /

lucreate -n solaris10_u6 -m /:/dev/md/dsk/d9:mirror,ufs -m /:/dev/dsk/c0t0d0s3,/dev/md/dsk/d10:attach -m /:/dev/dsk/c0t1d0s3,/dev/md/dsk/d11:attach -m /export/home:merged:ufs

live upgrade is pretty flexible, I really like it and use it alot.

I hope this helps you

David

 

[gallows]

Darn David..Thanks!!
I've been reading docs for almost 2 weeks and haven't come across that yet. I've been scratching my head (and something else) trying to see how this was going to work. I've seen the lucreate many times but haven't seen anything to lead me to believe that I could still set it up like I want.

I noticed your second example is using mirrored device. All the stuff I've seen always tells you to break the mirrors, reboot, then do the prvtoc to slice 2 to make the disks the same.

I've wasted a lot of time. Can you recommend a good source for similar info like you provided? I don't care if it is a good book to buy or what) The Sun docs do have a few good examples, but it takes forever to read through all that documentation to pick out what you need.

Thanks again!!

 

[djr111]

honestly, I just learned it from my days working at Sun in early 2000's, since then I have been just increasing my personal knowledge on it by trying out different options available. The only thing I can suggest is the white paper for live upgrade, I think I stumbled across it once on Sun, I mean Oracles web site. They may give you some examples. other than that, I do not know if there are books on live upgrade.

There is alot of other good stuff/options you can use to make live upgrade go faster/smoother or for other benefits, like the "preserve" option. I use this also. below is an example of another lucreate command that I used.

also note, my initial examples did not include swap devices, swap is handled by live upgrade with no problem, I just happen to post examples that did not deal with them.


This example deals with swap...

lucreate -c s10_u5 -n lu_u6 -m /:/dev/md/dsk/d10:ufs,mirror -m /:/dev/md/dsk/d1:detach,attach,preserve  -m /var:/dev/md/dsk/d20:ufs,mirror -m /var:/dev/md/dsk/d3:detach,attach,preserve  -m -:/dev/md/dsk/d30:swap

you also mentioned detaching the mirror:

you can also do this:

lucreate -n lu_u4 -m /:/dev/md/dsk/d10:ufs,mirror -m /:/dev/md/dsk/d12:detach,attach,preserve  -m /export:/dev/md/dsk/d80:ufs,mirror -m /export:/dev/md/dsk/d82:detach,attach,preserve -m /var:/dev/md/dsk/d90:ufs,mirror -m /var:/dev/md/dsk/d92:detach,attach,preserve  -m -:/dev/md/dsk/d70:swap

in the above example, you leave your primary boot environment alone, do not detach your metadevices, basically keep your primary boot environment mirrored.

you then run this command, what it does is it detaches the defined submirror from the primary boot environment and attaches it to the new alternate boot environment. Some of these examples benefit certain criteria for using live upgrade, so you need to research this piece, if you have questions let me know.





hope this helps, sorry for throw a bunch of junk at ya.
David

 

[gallows]

Pure gold David. Thanks!!

I went over your examples and understand what is going on.
By the way, I think you missed a ending " quote on your very first example)

I also think I will take you up on your kind offer and ask a question.

We have about 30 Sun Freeware programs we use in /usr/local, which is under root. When I do the upgrade those Solaris 9 programs obviously won't work in Solaris 10. Is there a way I can change those programs to the Solaris 10 version without booting up in the Solaris 10 envrionment? I really can't afford the downtime. I'm hoping there is a way to modify the Solaris 10 environment while my solaris 9 production is still running.

Thanks again and have a good weekend!!

gallows

 

[djr111]

I've never had the need to do what you are wanting to do with your sunfreeware pkgs, but just so you know you can lumount the inactive (new boot environment) while you are running in your original boot environment. while it is mounted you can modify whatever you want.

To mount:

lumount /dev/dsk/c3t2d0s0 /mnt

To unmount:

 luumount /dev/dsk/c3t2d0s0

By the way, if you are the type of person that likes to use interfaces to do work, you can use this to create/manage live upgrades:

I'm not a fan of it, I much prefer command line.

/usr/sbin/lu

 

[gallows]

Ok, thanks David. I will try that tomorrow. Sounds like that is what I am looking for. I thought that the interface was not available anymore. I like the command line anyway, and will see if the interface is still there. I have to quit reading and start doing)