Restrictions for Using Solaris Live Upgrade

Enda O'Connor, June 2008 ( Updated February 2009)

Please be aware of the following restrictions when you are using Solaris Live Upgrade:

• You can use Solaris Live Upgrade to patch an inactive boot environment only if the same Marketing Release of the Solaris OS is installed on the active and inactive boot environments. Solaris releases 8, 9, and 10 are Marketing Releases of the Solaris OS.

  Within each Marketing Release, you can have any Update Release on the active or inactive boot environments. For example, you can have the Solaris 10 3/05 OS on the active boot partition (that is, the running system) and the Solaris 10 5/08 OS on the inactive boot environment.

• It is not possible to use Solaris Live Upgrade to patch a Solaris 10 inactive boot environment when the active boot environment is running the Solaris 8 or 9 OS, because Solaris Live Upgrade will invoke the patch utilities on the active boot partition to patch the inactive boot partition. The Solaris 8 and Solaris 9 patch utilities are unaware of Solaris Containers (Zones), Service Management Facility (SMF), and other enhancements in the Solaris 10 OS, so the patch utilities will fail to correctly patch an inactive Solaris 10 boot environment.

  Therefore, if you are using Solaris Live Upgrade to upgrade a system from the Solaris 8 or Solaris 9 OS to the Solaris 10 OS, you must first activate the Solaris 10 boot environment before patching it. After the Solaris 10 boot environment is activated, you can either patch the active boot environment directly or set up another inactive boot environment and patch it using Solaris Live Upgrade.

  Note : In both cases, please ensure you have the latest patch utilities patch installed.

  • For SPARC: 119254
  • For x86: 119255

• For SPARC systems, you can now use Solaris Live Upgrade to directly upgrade from the Solaris 8 OS to the Solaris 10 5/08 release or later release, because a special p7zip package has been made available. To get instructions and download the package, see SPARC: Using Solaris Live Upgrade to Upgrade From Solaris 8 to Solaris 10 05/08 (or Later Solaris Releases).

  Alternatively, you can use regular Solaris Upgrade (as opposed to Solaris Live Upgrade) to upgrade directly from the Solaris 8 OS to the Solaris 10 5/08 OS or later.

• For x86 systems, you cannot use either regular Solaris Upgrade or Solaris Live Upgrade to directly upgrade from the Solaris 8 OS to the Solaris 10 OS.

  You can use regular Solaris Upgrade or Solaris Live Upgrade to upgrade from the Solaris 8 OS to the Solaris 9 OS, and then use either option again to upgrade from the Solaris 9 OS to the Solaris 10 5/08 or later release.

  See Example: Upgrading an x86 System From the Solaris 8 OS to the Solaris 10 5/08 OS for more information.

Example: Upgrading an x86 System From the Solaris 8 OS to the Solaris 10 5/08 OS

The following example shows a potential upgrade sequence for an x86 system to upgrade from the Solaris 8 OS to the Solaris 10 5/08 OS:

Note : Please follow the instructions in InfoDoc 206844 Solaris Live Upgrade Software: Minimum Patch Requirements before using Solaris Live Upgrade.

1. Create a mirror image of the current Solaris 8 environment using lucreate.

2. Upgrade the mirror image to the Solaris 9 OS using luupgrade.

3. Boot the Solaris 9 OS using luactivate. It will now be the active boot environment.

4. Create a mirror image of the Solaris 9 environment using lucreate.

5. Upgrade the mirror image to the Solaris 10 5/08 OS using luupgrade.

6. Boot the Solaris 10 5/08 OS using luactivate. It will now be the active boot environment.

7. To patch the new boot environment using Live Upgrade, create a mirror image of the active Solaris 10 5/08 boot environment using lucreate.

8. Use luupgrade -t to patch the inactive Solaris 10 5/08 environment.

9. Boot the patched Solaris 10 5/08 environment using luactivate.

For More Information

Here are additional resources:

• Sun training courses at http://www.sun.com/training/, which contain modules about the fundamentals of patch administration:
  • Make the Transition to the Solaris 10 Operating System (VC-SA-210-S10)
  • Solaris Operating Environment Essentials for System Maintainers (SM-101)
  • System Administration for the Solaris 10 Operating System Part 1 (SA-200-S10)
  • Solaris 10 Features for Experienced Solaris System Administrators (SA-225-S10)
  • Solaris System Administration for Experienced UNIX Administrators (STS-276)
• Support:
  • Register your Sun gear
  • Services
  • SunSolve Online
• Sun forums, such as the Solaris Forums
• These and other documents at http://docs.sun.com:
  • Solaris Patch Management: Recommended Strategy
  • Documents in the Solaris 10 System Administrator Collection, for example, the System Administration Guide: Basic Administration, which contains a chapter on managing Solaris patches
  • Solaris 10 5/08 Installation Guide: Solaris Live Upgrade and Upgrade Planning
• Sun wikis, such as the Sun BluePrints wiki
• Related sites:
  • Solaris Live Upgrade How-To Guide
  • Sun BluePrints Online Article: Patching Mirrored Systems with the Solaris Live Upgrade Software
  • Patch Corner Blog
  • These and other BigAdmin resources:
    • Solaris Information Center - Patching How To
    • Patch Management Best Practices
    • What's New in Patching
    • FAQ: Patching for the Solaris OS
    • Overview of Solaris Patch Types and Dependencies
    • How To Use Solaris Live Upgrade to Install Patches
    • Patching an x86 Miniroot Image for the Solaris OS
• Events of interest to users of Sun products:
  • Worldwide Developer Events
  • Current Events

Updates

February 2009:

1. Changed third level-one bullet from this:

• For SPARC systems, currently, you cannot use Solaris Live Upgrade to directly upgrade from the Solaris 8 OS to the latest Solaris 10 5/08 release, because the Solaris 10 5/08 OS uses p7zip compression, which is currently unavailable on the Solaris 8 OS. (This restriction does not apply to using Solaris Live Upgrade to upgrade from the Solaris 9 OS or the Solaris 10 OS.) A solution that will allow upgrade of the Solaris 8 OS to the Solaris 10 5/08 OS is planned for the future.

  You can use Solaris Live Upgrade to upgrade from the Solaris 8 OS to the Solaris 10 8/07 OS, and then use Solaris Live Upgrade again to upgrade from the Solaris 10 8/07 OS to the Solaris 10 5/08 OS.

  Alternatively, you can use regular Solaris Upgrade (as opposed to Solaris Live Upgrade) to upgrade directly from the Solaris 8 OS to the Solaris 10 5/08 OS.

  See Example: Upgrading a SPARC System From the Solaris 8 OS to the Solaris 10 5/08 OS for more information.

To this:

• For SPARC systems, you can now use Solaris Live Upgrade to directly upgrade from the Solaris 8 OS to the Solaris 10 5/08 release or later release, because a special p7zip package has been made available. To get instructions and download the package, see SPARC: Using Solaris Live Upgrade to Upgrade From Solaris 8 to Solaris 10 05/08 (or Later Solaris Releases).

  Alternatively, you can use regular Solaris Upgrade (as opposed to Solaris Live Upgrade) to upgrade directly from the Solaris 8 OS to the Solaris 10 5/08 OS or later.

2. Deleted "Example: Upgrading a SPARC System From the Solaris 8 OS to the Solaris 10 5/08 OS" section.

3. Changed second paragraph under fourth level-one bullet from this:

You can use regular Solaris Upgrade or Solaris Live Upgrade to upgrade from the Solaris 8 OS to the Solaris 9 OS, and then use either option again to upgrade from the Solaris 9 OS to the Solaris 10 5/08 OS.

To this:

You can use regular Solaris Upgrade or Solaris Live Upgrade to upgrade from the Solaris 8 OS to the Solaris 9 OS, and then use either option again to upgrade from the Solaris 9 OS to the Solaris 10 5/08 or later release.