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Rapid Patching and Upgrading with Solaris Live Upgrade Software

Amy Rich, February 2004

Because business has largely become a 24x7 operation, most companies strive for minimal or no downtime across the company infrastructure. If a site has only one machine performing a critical function instead of using clustering or another form of HA, the uptime of that machine is of utmost importance. Such machines still require maintenance and the occasional upgrade, but this must be balanced with the need for machine availability. In situations like this, tools such as JumpStart, Live Upgrade, and Web Start Flash are invaluable. These three tools are designed to greatly speed reinstallation, upgrading, and modifications to a machine so that a functioning system can be obtained with minimal downtime. This article takes a look at using Live Upgrade in conjunction with JumpStart and Web Start Flash to minimize downtime for system maintenance and upgrades.

Live Upgrade is a suite of tools that allow the system administrator to utilize free disk space to create a copy, called the alternate boot environment (ABE), of the currently running system. Modifications can be made to the alternate boot environment with the system still running in a production setting. Once these modifications are complete, the alternate boot environment can be activated so that the system boots off of the newly selected boot environment during subsequent reboots. Starting with the Solaris 7 Operating System, Live Upgrade allows for an "N+3" upgrade path, meaning that Solaris version N (7) can be upgraded to N+1 (8), N+2 (9), and N+3 (10). In addition, the SPARC Platform Edition of the Solaris 2.6 OS can be upgraded to Solaris 8 and 9, skipping Solaris 7.

Preparing to Upgrade

Several steps must be taken before Live Upgrade can be used. To ensure smooth operation, the machine undergoing the upgrade requires the application of a specific set of patches, available from SunSolve, to the currently booted OS. To determine the necessary patches required by a system, read Sun Infodoc ID72099, Solaris Live-Upgrade Minimum Patch Requirements. Live Upgrade also requires a set of prerequisite packages as detailed by this chart in the Solaris Live Upgrade Guide. Once the prerequisite packages are in place, the Live Upgrade packages, SUNWlur and SUNWluu, must also be installed from the version of Solaris to which the target machine is being upgraded. For example, if the machine is being upgraded from Solaris 8 to Solaris 9 12/03, the Live Upgrade packages must be installed from the Solaris 9 12/03 distribution.

The Live Upgrade suite of tools installed by SUNWlur and SUNWluu consists of:

• lu - A deprecated curses-based menuing interface for creating and administering boot environments. There are plans to replace this interface with a true GUI application.
• luactivate - Designate the specified boot environment as the one to boot from in subsequent boots.
• lucancel - Cancel a scheduled Live Upgrade operation.
• lucompare - Compare the contents of two boot environments.
• lucreate - Create a boot environment.
• lucurr - Display the name of the currently booted boot environment.
• ludelete - Delete a boot environment.
• lufslist - List the file systems of a specified boot environment.
• lumake - Re-create a boot environment based on the current boot environment.
• lumount/luumount - Mount/unmount file systems of a specified boot environment.
• lurename - Rename a boot environment.
• lustatus - For every boot environment, list whether a boot environment is active, active upon the next boot, in the midst of a copy operation, and if a copy operation is scheduled for it.
• luupgrade - Modify a boot environment by installing flash archives, installing a complete OS, installing and/or deleting OS and application packages, or installing OS patches.

Once the appropriate packages and patches are installed and the necessary disk space is allocated, modifying a system with Live Upgrade usually involves five distinct steps:

1. Create a boot environment with lumake or lucreate.
2. Use luupgrade to upgrade, patch, add or remove packages, or install a Web Start Flash image.
3. Optionally compare the current boot environment and the alternate boot environment with lucompare, and/or use lumount to mount the alternate boot environment's file systems, manually make modifications, and then unmount them with luumount.
4. Activate the alternate boot environment with luactivate so that the machine will use the alternate boot environment for subsequent boots.
5. After booting off the new boot environment, optionally remove the original boot environment with ludelete or reuse it at a later date with lurename and lumake.

Creating a Boot Environment

Creating a boot environment requires that the machine have free disk slices and adequate space to hold the existing boot partitions. Files in /, /usr, /var, and /opt must be cloned to the new boot environment. Since most sites mirror the boot disk with Solaris Volume Manager (SVM), one of the easiest ways to accomplish this is to un-encapsulate the boot disk and use the mirror for the new boot environment. For information on creating and breaking mirrors, see the Solaris 9 Volume Manager Administration Guide. With the availability of the Live Upgrade volume manager project (PSARC/2003/064) integrated into Solaris 9 Update 4 (08/03), unencapsulating the current boot environment is no longer required if SVM is used.

Example One

The following example shows a machine with two identical disks, c0t1d0 and c0t3d0. c0t1d0 is the existing boot disk and has the following entries in /etc/vfstab:

fd      -       /dev/fd fd      -       no      -
/proc   -       /proc   proc    -       no      -
/dev/dsk/c0t1d0s1   -                    -       swap    -    no      -
/dev/dsk/c0t1d0s0   /dev/rdsk/c0t1d0s0   /       ufs     1    no    logging
/dev/dsk/c0t1d0s3   /dev/rdsk/c0t1d0s3   /usr    ufs     1    no    logging
/dev/dsk/c0t1d0s4   /dev/rdsk/c0t1d0s4   /var    ufs     1    no    logging
/dev/dsk/c0t1d0s5   /dev/rdsk/c0t1d0s5   /files  ufs     2    yes   logging
swap                -                    /tmp    tmpfs   -    yes     -

c0t3d0 is an unused disk formatted to exactly match c0t1d0 with prtvtoc and fmthard:

/usr/sbin/prtvtoc /dev/rdsk/c0t1d0s2 |/usr/sbin/fmthard -s - /dev/rdsk/c0t3d0s2

The secondary disk could also be formatted to combine or split existing partitions in the new boot environment or grow or shrink partition sizes instead of matching the original partitions exactly. Once the new disk is partitioned as desired, the lucreate command is used to simultaneously split, merge, resize, or exactly copy any combination of partitions resulting in a valid Solaris configuration. For example, splitting / and /kernel would be an invalid division of the root file system, but splitting /usr from / would work fine.

This first example uses the lucreate to name the current boot environment and create a new boot environment on the second disk. The optional -c flag assigns the specified name to the current boot environment and should only be used the first time lucreate runs. The -m option of the lucreate command is used to specify the location of the /, /usr, and /var file systems to be used by the new Solaris_9 alternate boot environment. Since the /files and swap partitions are not specified they are shared between the Solaris_8 boot environment and the Solaris_9 alternate boot environment.

# lucreate -c "Solaris_8" -m /:/dev/dsk/c0t3d0s0:ufs \
 -m /usr:/dev/dsk/c0t3d0s3:ufs -m /var:/dev/dsk/c0t3d0s4:ufs -n "Solaris_9"

Discovering physical storage devices
Discovering logical storage devices
Cross referencing storage devices with boot environment configurations
Determining types of file systems supported
Validating file system requests
Preparing logical storage devices
Preparing physical storage devices
Configuring physical storage devices
Configuring logical storage devices
Analyzing system configuration.
No name for current boot environment.
Current boot environment is named <Solaris_8>.
Creating initial configuration for primary boot environment <Solaris_8>.
PBE configuration successful: PBE name <Solaris_8> PBE Boot Device 
</dev/dsk/c0t1d0s0>.
Comparing source boot environment <Solaris_8> file systems with the file
system(s) you specified for the new boot environment. Determining which
file systems should be in the new boot environment.
Updating boot environment description database on all BEs.
Searching /dev for possible boot environment filesystem devices

Updating system configuration files.
Creating configuration for boot environment <Solaris_9>.
Creating boot environment <Solaris_9>.
Creating file systems on boot environment <Solaris_9>.
Creating <ufs> file system for </> on </dev/dsk/c0t3d0s0>.
Creating <ufs> file system for </usr> on </dev/dsk/c0t3d0s3>.
Creating <ufs> file system for </var> on </dev/dsk/c0t3d0s4>.
Mounting file systems for boot environment <Solaris_9>.
Calculating required sizes of file systems for boot environment <Solaris_9>.
Populating file systems on boot environment <Solaris_9>.
Checking selection integrity.
Integrity check OK.
Populating contents of mount point </>.
Populating contents of mount point </usr>.
Populating contents of mount point </var>.
Copying.
Creating shared file system mount points.
Creating compare databases for boot environment <Solaris_9>.
Creating compare database for file system </var>.
Creating compare database for file system </usr>.
Creating compare database for file system </>.
Updating compare databases on boot environment <Solaris_9>.
Making boot environment <Solaris_9> bootable.
Population of boot environment <Solaris_9> successful.
Creation of boot environment <Solaris_9> successful.

Example Two

Instead of using the preceding command to create the alternate boot environment so it matches the current boot environment, the following command joins / and /usr, assuming that c0t3d0s0 is partitioned with sufficient space:

# lucreate -c "Solaris_8" -m /:/dev/dsk/c0t3d0s0:ufs \
 -m /usr:merged:ufs -m /var:/dev/dsk/c0t3d0s4:ufs \
 -n "Solaris_9"

Example Three

This next example would instead split /opt off of /, assuming that c0t3d0s5 is partitioned with sufficient space:

# lucreate -c "Solaris_8" -m /:/dev/dsk/c0t3d0s0:ufs \
 -m /usr:/dev/dsk/c0t3d0s3:ufs -m /var:/dev/dsk/c0t3d0s4:ufs \
 -m /opt:/dev/dsk/c0t3d0s5:ufs -n "Solaris_9"

Example Four

This final example creates a new boot environment on an encapsulated mirror. The entire current boot environment (/, /usr, /var, and /opt) resides on the mirror d0, consisting of two partitions c0t0d0s0 and c1t0d0s0. To create the alternate boot environment on a new mirror d10 containing partitions c0t0d0s6 and c0t3d0s6:

# lucreate -c "Solaris_8" -m /:/dev/md/dsk/d10:ufs,mirror  \
 -m /:/dev/dsk/c0t0d0s6:attach  -m /:/dev/dsk/c0t3d0s6:attach -n "Solaris_9"

With the current boot environment named and the alternate boot environment initialized to match the boot environment (as shown in the Example One), lufslist can be used to view both. Note that /files and the swap partition remained on c0t1d0 since they were not explicitly cloned with lucreate.

# lufslist Solaris_8
               boot environment name: Solaris_8
               This boot environment is currently active.
               This boot environment will be active on next system boot.

Filesystem              fstype    device size Mounted on    Mount Options
- ----------------------- -------- ------------ ------------- -------------
/dev/dsk/c0t1d0s1       swap       1076428800 -             -
/dev/dsk/c0t1d0s0       ufs        1076428800 /             logging
/dev/dsk/c0t1d0s3       ufs        2149171200 /usr          logging
/dev/dsk/c0t1d0s4       ufs        1076428800 /var          logging
/dev/dsk/c0t1d0s5       ufs       31540838400 /files        logging

# lufslist Solaris_9
               boot environment name: Solaris_9

Filesystem              fstype    device size Mounted on    Mount Options
- ----------------------- -------- ------------ ------------- -------------
/dev/dsk/c0t1d0s1       swap       1076428800 -             -
/dev/dsk/c0t3d0s0       ufs        1076428800 /             logging
/dev/dsk/c0t1d0s5       ufs       31540838400 /files        logging
/dev/dsk/c0t3d0s3       ufs        2149171200 /usr          logging
/dev/dsk/c0t3d0s4       ufs        1076428800 /var          logging

The Versatility of luupgrade

With the alternate boot environment prepared for modification, luupgrade can be used to upgrade the OS, add or delete packages, or install patches. These sources for these modifications can be a distribution CD-ROM or DVD, a JumpStart distribution, a Web Start Flash archive, or a collection of patches.

Using luupgrade to Upgrade from a JumpStart Server

This next example shows how to upgrade from the existing Solaris 8 alternate boot environment to Solaris 9 by means of an NFS-mounted JumpStart installation. First create a JumpStart installation from CD-ROM, DVD, or an ISO image as covered in the Solaris 9 Installation Guide. The JumpStart installation in this example resides in /install on the server js-server. The OS image itself resides in /install/cdrom/SunOS-5.9-sparc. The profiles for this JumpStart installation dwell in /install/jumpstart/profiles/ in a subdirectory called liveupgrade. Within this directory, the file js-upgrade contains the JumpStart profile to upgrade the OS and additionally install the package SUNWxwice:

install_type upgrade
package SUNWxwice add

On the target machine, mount the /install partition from js-server and run luupgrade, specifying the Solaris_9 alternate boot environment as the target, the OS image location, and the JumpStart profile:

# mkdir /install

# mount -o ro js-server:/install /install

# luupgrade -u -n "Solaris_9" -s /install/cdrom/SunOS-5.9-sparc \
- -j /install/jumpstart/profiles/liveupgrade/js-upgrade 

Validating the contents of the media </install/cdrom/SunOS-5.9-sparc>.
The media is a standard Solaris media.
The media contains an operating system upgrade image.
The media contains <Solaris> version <9>.
Constructing upgrade profile to use.
Locating the operating system upgrade program.
Checking for existence of previously scheduled Live Upgrade requests.
Creating upgrade profile for BE <Solaris_9>.
Determining packages to install or upgrade for BE <Solaris_9>.
Performing the operating system upgrade of the BE <Solaris_9>.
CAUTION: Interrupting this process may leave the boot environment unstable 
  or unbootable.
Upgrading Solaris: 100% completed
Installation of the packages from this the media is complete.
Adding operating system patches to the BE <Solaris_9>.
The operating system patch installation is complete.
INFORMATION: </var/sadm/system/logs/upgrade_log> contains a log of the 
upgrade operation.
INFORMATION: </var/sadm/system/data/upgrade_cleanup> contains a log of 
cleanup operations required.
INFORMATION: Review the files listed above on boot environment 
<Solaris_9>. Before you activate the boot environment, determine if any 
additional system maintenance is required or if additional media of the 
software distribution must be installed.
The Solaris upgrade of the boot environment <Solaris_9> is complete.

The Solaris_9 alternate boot environment is now upgraded to Solaris 9 08/03 as shown by using the lustatus command:

# lustatus

Boot Environment           Is       Active Active    Can    Copy      
Name                       Complete Now    On Reboot Delete Status    
- -------------------------- -------- ------ --------- ------ ----------
Solaris_8                  yes      yes    yes       no     -         
Solaris_9                  yes      no     no        yes    -         

Following the profile directive, SUNWxwice is also installed on the the Solaris_9 alternate boot environment now.

Using luupgrade to Patch a System

Though the Solaris_9 alternate boot environment now contains Solaris 9 08/03, a number of patches have been released since the OS distribution from the JumpStart image was created. Conveniently, Live Upgrade can also patch the alternate boot environment by specifying the -t flag. The -t switch could have also been used to patch the Solaris 8 installation instead of upgrading to Solaris 9 if the machine were not slated for migration.

In the following example, the NFS-mounted JumpStart partition contains the recommended patch cluster in /install/data/patches/SunOS-5.9-sparc/recommended/. The -O switch to luupgrade -t specifies additional options to pass to the patchadd program. Tell Live Upgrade to read the patch_order file located in the /install/data/patches/SunOS-5.9-sparc/recommended/ directory by specifying the -O switch as follows:

# luupgrade -t -n "Solaris_9" \
 -s /install/data/patches/SunOS-5.9-sparc/recommended -O \
 "-M /install/data/patches/SunOS-5.9-sparc/recommended patch_order"

Validating the contents of the media 
  </install/data/patches/SunOS-5.9-sparc/recommended>.
The media contains 93 software patches that can be added.
All 93 patches will be added because you did not specify any specific patches 
  to add.
Mounting the BE <Solaris_9>.
Adding patches to the BE <Solaris_9>.

The Solaris_9 alternate boot environment is now fully upgraded and patched.

Using luupgrade to Install a Web Start Flash Archive

Instead of upgrading or patching a system, Live Upgrade can also be used to install a Web Start Flash image. This is especially useful when a number of identical servers perform the same tasks, such as a web farm cluster. Web Start Flash allows the system administrator to archive a specific reference installation on a master machine. Once the archive is created, it can be copied to other machines, without the configuration information erased by running sys-unconfig. Unless otherwise specified, Web Start Flash copies every other file on the system into the archive. As a result, items like logs, licenses, tmp files and others should be excluded from the archive or dealt with after installation on a clone machine. For additional information on using Web Start Flash, refer to the Web Start Flash section of the Solaris 9 Installation Guide.

Since the previous example upgraded and patched the Solaris_9 alternate boot environment, and I want to start over fresh, the first step is to erase it and recreate it so that it once again contains an exact copy of the existing Solaris_8 boot environment:

# lumake -n Solaris_9

Creating configuration for boot environment <Solaris_9>.
Determining the split file systems of </var>.
Determining the merge point of </var>.
Determining the size and inode count for the split filesystem of </var>.
Determining the split file systems of </usr>.
Determining the merge point of </usr>.
Determining the size and inode count for the split filesystem of </usr>.
Determining the split file systems of </>.
Determining the merge point of </>.
Determining the size and inode count for the split filesystem of </>.
Creating boot environment <Solaris_9>.
Creating file systems on boot environment <Solaris_9>.
Creating <ufs> file system for </> on </dev/dsk/c0t3d0s0>.
Creating <ufs> file system for </usr> on </dev/dsk/c0t3d0s3>.
Creating <ufs> file system for </var> on </dev/dsk/c0t3d0s4>.
Mounting file systems for boot environment <Solaris_9>.
Calculating required sizes of file systems for boot environment <Solaris_9>.
Populating file systems on boot environment <Solaris_9>.
Checking selection integrity.
Integrity check OK.
Populating contents of mount point </>.
Populating contents of mount point </usr>.
Populating contents of mount point </var>.
Copying.
Creating shared file system mount points.
Creating compare databases for boot environment <Solaris_9>.
Creating compare database for file system </var>.
Creating compare database for file system </usr>.
Creating compare database for file system </>.
Updating compare databases on boot environment <Solaris_9>.
Making boot environment <Solaris_9> bootable.
Population of boot environment <Solaris_9> successful.

Next create a Web Start Flash archive on the master machine. This master machine has Solaris 9 08/03 installed with the latest patch cluster and also has additional software and customizations. Omit the /files, /var/adm, /var/tmp, and /var/log directories from the archive by specifying the -x switch to exclude them:

# flarcreate -n "Solaris 9 12.22.2003 Full Patched" \
 -x /files/ -x /var/adm/ -x /var/tmp/ -x /var/log \
 /files/Solaris-9-12.22.2003.archive

Determining which filesystems will be included in the archive...
Determining the size of the archive...
The archive will be approximately 0.95GB.
Creating the archive...
1995279 blocks
Archive creation complete.

Place the Web Start Flash archive on the JumpStart server's NFS exported partition. This example shows it stored in /install/data/flash-images/. Finally, use luupgrade - -f to install the Web Start Flash archive on the clone machine's Solaris_9 alternate boot environment:

# luupgrade -f -n "Solaris_9" \
 -s /install/cdrom/SunOS-5.9-sparc \
 -a /install/data/flash-images/Solaris-9-12.22.2003.archive

Validating the contents of the media </install/cdrom/SunOS-5.9-sparc>.
The media is a standard Solaris media.
Validating the contents of the miniroot 
  </install/cdrom/SunOS-5.9-sparc/Solaris_9/Tools/Boot>.
Locating the flash install program.
Checking for existence of previously scheduled Live Upgrade requests.
Constructing flash profile to use.
Creating flash profile for BE <Solaris_9>.
Performing the operating system flash install of the BE <Solaris_9>.
CAUTION: Interrupting this process may leave the boot environment unstable 
  or unbootable.
Extracting Flash Archive: 100% completed (of  974.26 megabytes)            
The operating system flash install completed.
The Live Flash Install of the boot environment <Solaris_9> is complete.

Checking and Modifying an Alternate Boot Environment

After the alternate boot environment has been successfully upgraded, patched, or overwritten with a Web Start Flash archive, it's wise to look through the alternate boot environment's configuration files and make any necessary changes. The lucompare command compares the contents of the current boot environment with the contents of the specified inactive alternate boot environment. When performing a comparison, the alternate boot environment cannot have any partitions mounted with lumount or mount and must be in a complete state with no copy jobs scheduled. If only a select number of files need to be compared with their counterparts on the alternate boot environment, the -i specifies a file that contains a list of absolute paths to compare. Any listed directories are compared recursively. The -t switch to lucompare is also useful since it limits the comparison to non-binary files. Output from the lucompare command can be saved off to a file with the -o switch for later perusal.

# lucompare -t Solaris_9 -o /tmp/BE-comparisons

Another option for checking inactive alternate boot environment is lumount. lumount mounts all file systems from the specified alternate boot environment so they can be viewed and modified by the system administrator. Once changes are complete, unmount the alternate boot environment with the luumount command.

# lumount Solaris_9
/.alt.Solaris_9

# df -k
Filesystem         1024-blocks   Used  Available Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/dsk/c0t1d0s0  1019167      51821     906196     6%    /
/dev/dsk/c0t1d0s3  2056111     176498    1817930     9%    /usr
/proc                    0          0          0     0%    /proc
fd                       0          0          0     0%    /dev/fd
mnttab                   0          0          0     0%    /etc/mnttab
/dev/dsk/c0t1d0s4  1019167      41496     916521     5%    /var
swap               1127624         24    1127600     1%    /var/run
swap               1127608          8    1127600     1%    /tmp
/dev/dsk/c0t1d0s5 30331071      72676   29955085     1%    /files
/dev/dsk/c0t3d0s0  1019167      61097     896920     7%    /.alt.Solaris_9
/dev/dsk/c0t3d0s3  2056111     200737    1793691    11%    /.alt.Solaris_9/usr
/dev/dsk/c0t3d0s4  1019167      32817     925200     4%    /.alt.Solaris_9/var

Activating the Alternate Boot Environment with luactivate

When the alternate boot environment is completely configured and meets all of the necessary requirements, activate it with luactivate so that the machine uses it as the boot environment on subsequent boots. If the new boot environment fails to boot or other problems occur, it should be easy to revert to the original boot environment as specified below.

# luactivate Solaris_9

**********************************************************************

The target boot environment has been activated. It will be used when you 
reboot. NOTE: You MUST NOT USE the reboot, halt, or uadmin commands. You 
MUST USE either the init or the shutdown command when you reboot. If you 
do not use either init or shutdown, the system will not boot using the 
target BE.

**********************************************************************

In case of a failure while booting to the target BE, the following process 
needs to be followed to fall back to the currently working boot environment:

1. Enter the PROM monitor (ok prompt).

2. Change the boot device back to the original boot environment by typing:

     setenv boot-device disk1:a

3. Boot to the original boot environment by typing:

     boot

**********************************************************************

Activation of boot environment <Solaris_9> successful.

Now that luactivate has been run on the Solaris_9 alternate boot environment, lufslist and lustatus both indicate that it'll be active on the next system boot:

# lufslist Solaris_9
               boot environment name: Solaris_9
               This boot environment will be active on next system boot.

Filesystem              fstype    device size Mounted on    Mount Options
- ---------------------- -------- ------------ -------------- --------------
/dev/dsk/c0t1d0s1       swap       1076428800 -              -
/dev/dsk/c0t3d0s0       ufs        1076428800 /              logging
/dev/dsk/c0t1d0s5       ufs       31540838400 /files         logging
/dev/dsk/c0t3d0s3       ufs        2149171200 /usr           logging
/dev/dsk/c0t3d0s4       ufs        1076428800 /var           logging

# lustatus

Boot Environment           Is       Active Active    Can    Copy      
Name                       Complete Now    On Reboot Delete Status    
- -------------------------- -------- ------ --------- ------ ----------
Solaris_8                  yes      yes    no        no     -         
Solaris_9                  yes      no     yes       no     -         

At the next convenient time, such as the next maintenance window, reboot the machine with the init command:

# init 6
INIT: New run level: 6
The system is coming down.  Please wait.
System services are now being stopped.
Live Upgrade: Deactivating current boot environment <Solaris_8>.
Live Upgrade: Executing Stop procedures for boot environment <Solaris_8>.
Live Upgrade: Current boot environment is <Solaris_8>.
Live Upgrade: New boot environment will be <Solaris_9>.
Live Upgrade: Activating boot environment <Solaris_9>.
Live Upgrade: The boot device for boot environment <Solaris_9> is 
</dev/dsk/c0t3d0s0>.
Live Upgrade: Activation of boot environment <Solaris_9> completed.
The system is down.
syncing file systems... done
rebooting...
Resetting ... 

Rebooting with command: boot                                          
Boot device: disk3:a  File and args: 
SunOS Release 5.9 Version Generic_112233-08 64-bit
Copyright 1983-2003 Sun Microsystems, Inc.  All rights reserved.
Use is subject to license terms.
configuring IPv4 interfaces: hme0.
Hostname: machine.my.domain
Configuring /dev and /devices
Configuring the /dev directory (compatibility devices)
The system is coming up.  Please wait.
checking ufs filesystems
/dev/rdsk/c0t1d0s7: is clean.
/dev/rdsk/c0t1d0s5: is logging.
Live Upgrade: Synchronizing new boot environment.
Live Upgrade: Previous boot environment was <Solaris_8>.
Live Upgrade: Current boot environment is now <Solaris_9>.
Configuring network interface addresses: hme0.
starting rpc services: rpcbind done.
Setting netmask of hme0 to 255.255.255.0
Setting default IPv4 interface for multicast: add net 224.0/4: 
  gateway machine.my.domain
syslog service starting.
/etc/mail/aliases: 3 aliases, longest 10 bytes, 52 bytes total
starting SSHD daemon
volume management starting.
The system is ready.

Recycling or Removing the Old Boot Environment

Once the new boot environment is proven to be complete and stable, the original boot environment can be removed with the ludelete command:

# ludelete Solaris_8

Determining the devices to be marked free.
Updating boot environment configuration database.
Updating boot environment description database on all BEs.
Updating all boot environment configuration databases.
Boot environment <Solaris_8> deleted.

If the root disk was originally mirrored, it can now be re-encapsulated and re-mirrored. If the original boot environment was not part of an existing mirror, it can be renamed and remade for future Live Upgrade maintenance tasks instead of deleting it. For example, the original boot environment could be renamed to Solaris_10 in preparation for migrating from Solaris 9 08/03 to Solaris 10 or Solaris_9_01_04 in preparation for applying the 01/04 recommended patch set:

# lurename -e Solaris_8 -n Solaris_10

Renaming boot environment <Solaris_8> to <Solaris_9_01_04>.

Changing the name of BE in the BE definition file.
Changing the name of BE in configuration file.
Updating compare databases on boot environment <Solaris_9_01_04>.
Changing the name of BE in Internal Configuration Files.
Propagating the boot environment name change to all BEs.
Boot environment <Solaris_8> renamed to <Solaris_9_01_04>.

When the recommended patch set is available and ready for application, simply run lumake -n Solaris_9_01_04 to clone the current environment back over to the boot environment.

Resources

• An Introduction to Live Upgrade: Sun BluePrints article (PDF)
• Solaris Live Upgrade 2.0 Guide
• Chart of Solaris Live Upgrade prerequisite packages
• SunSolve web site, for obtaining patches
• Solaris Volume Manager Administration Guide
• Best Practices for Migrating to the Solaris 9 Operating System white paper (PDF)
• Solaris Operating Environment Deployment Mechanisms in Replicated and High Availability Environments white paper (PDF)
• Solaris Web Start Flash (pdf)
• Web Start Flash section of the Solaris 9 Installation Guide
• JumpStart Technology: Effective Use in the Solaris Operating Environment: Sun BluePrints book by John Howard and Alex Noordergraaf, ISBN 0-13-062154-4
• JumpStart Enterprise Toolkit (JET)

Unless otherwise licensed, code in all technical manuals herein (including articles, FAQs, samples) is provided under this License.