Following Boyd’s presentation on LiveUpgrade at MSOSUG, I used LiveUpgrade to upgrade a scratch machine to Solaris 10, Update 4. Here’s a walkthrough:

Our machine, salsa, is running Solaris 10u2 on an x86 host with root disks mirrored with SVM.

# grep Solaris /etc/release 
Solaris 10 6/06 s10x_u2wos_09a X86 
# uname -a 
SunOS salsa 5.10 Generic_125101-10 i86pc i386 i86pc 
# df -kh / /opt 
Filesystem             size   used  avail capacity  Mounted on 
/dev/md/dsk/d20        7.9G   4.5G   3.3G    59%    / 
/dev/md/dsk/d23        7.9G   369M   7.4G     5%    /opt 
# metastat -p d20 
d20 -m d10 d30 1 
d10 1 1 c0d0s0 
d30 1 1 c1d0s0 
# metastat -p d23 
d23 -m d13 d33 1 
d13 1 1 c0d0s3 
d33 1 1 c1d0s3

As you can see, a pretty common desktop type deployment. /opt is on a different filesystem and we’ll need to upgrade some packages that live there, so we’ll have to take care of /opt as well. If the machine had a seperate /var filesystem (as all production systems should), we’d take care of that as well.

You may wish to install the latest Live Upgrade packages at this time, as well as check for any critical liveupgrade patches. You can use Patch Check Advanced to make the search for patches easier, and a recent LU will be on your Solaris media.

Before commencing the LiveUpgrade process on an x86/x64 machine, you’ll want to make sure /sbin/biosdev returns the correct information for your disks. It often doesn’t, so this is an important first step. If you have a SPARC machine, you can cheerfully ignore this. It should return a line with the BIOS disk number and full path for each disk. If it doesn’t, consult Boyd’s slides, page 49 for a hackjob. This is apparently being fixed. The BIOS disk numbering runs like this, traditionally:

To get started, we’ll use “lucreate” to break the mirrors and create a new boot environment (BE). I chose d40 for the new mirror name, but you can pick whatever you like that isn’t already in use.

# lucreate -c u2 -n u4 -m /:/dev/md/dsk/d40:ufs,mirror 
-m /:/dev/dsk/c0d0s0:detach,attach,preserve 
-m /opt:/dev/md/dsk/d43:ufs,mirror 
-m /opt:/dev/dsk/c0d0s3:detach,attach,preserve

This tells LiveUpgrade to break the existing mirrors and create new mirrors on d40 and d43 with the selected submirror partitions, in this case c0d0s0 and c0d0s3.

You will see a lot of noise at this point, including some errors. Do not worry. As long as the process completes succesfully, you should be fine. The output will look something like this:

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. 
Comparing source boot environment <u2> 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. 
The device  is not a root device for any boot environment; cannot get BE ID. 
Creating configuration for boot environment <u4>. 
Source boot environment is <u2>. 
Creating boot environment <u4>. 
Checking for GRUB menu on boot environment <u4>. 
Saving GRUB menu on boot environment <u4>. 
Creating file systems on boot environment <u4>. 
Preserving <ufs> file system for </> on . 
Preserving <ufs> file system for  on . 
Mounting file systems for boot environment <u4>. 
Calculating required sizes of file systems for boot environment <u4>. 
Populating file systems on boot environment <u4>. 
Checking selection integrity. 
Integrity check OK. 
Preserving contents of mount point . 
Preserving contents of mount point . 
Copying file systems that have not been preserved. 
Creating shared file system mount points. 
Creating compare databases for boot environment <u4>. 
Creating compare database for file system . 
Creating compare database for file system . 
Updating compare databases on boot environment <u4>. 
Making boot environment <u4> bootable. 
Updating bootenv.rc on ABE <u4>. 
Generating partition and slice information for ABE <u4> 
Setting root slice to Solaris Volume Manager metadevice . 
Restoring GRUB menu. 
The GRUB menu has been restored on device . 
Population of boot environment <u4> successful. 
Creation of boot environment <u4> successful.

Again, you will see some errors and noise here. I saw messages like:

invalid option 'r' 
usage: mount [-o opts] 
<path> 
ERROR: Mount failed for:

It didn’t interfere with the process at all.

Now, mount your media for the upgrade. Either pop the DVD in the drive or mount using the loopback interface. Since this little machine had no optical drive, I mounted the media like this:

# lofiadm -a /share/solaris-10-update-4-x86.iso 
# mkdir /mnt/Solaris10u4 
# mount -F hsfs -o ro /dev/lofi/1 /mnt/Solaris10u4

If you already have some lofi devices created, the device to mount will be different. Look at the output of lofiadm -a to get the correct device name.

Next, to upgrade the new BE:

# luupgrade -u -n u4 -s /mnt/Solaris10u4

The new BE will be upgraded. This takes quite some time, and again, you will see noise and the occasional error. As long as the job finishes, you should be fine. Example output:

Copying failsafe multiboot from media. 
Uncompressing miniroot 
Creating miniroot device 
miniroot filesystem is <ufs> 
Mounting miniroot at  </mnt/Solaris10u4//Solaris_10/Tools/Boot> 
Validating the contents of the media </mnt/Solaris10u4> 
The media is a standard Solaris media. 
The media contains an operating system upgrade image. 
The media contains <Solaris;> version <10>. 
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 <u4>. 
Checking for GRUB menu on ABE <u4>. 
Saving GRUB menu on ABE <u4>. 
Checking for x86 boot partition on ABE. 
Determining packages to install or upgrade for BE <u4>. 
Performing the operating system upgrade of the BE <u4>. 
CAUTION: Interrupting this process may leave the boot environment unstable 
or unbootable. 
Upgrading Solaris: xx% 
Installation of the packages from this media is complete. 
Restoring GRUB menu on ABE <u4>. 
Updating package information on boot environment <u4>. 
Package information successfully updated on boot environment <u4>. 
Adding operating system patches to the BE <u4>. 
The operating system patch installation is complete. 
ABE boot partition backing deleted. 
Configuring failsafe for system. 
Failsafe configuration is complete. 
INFORMATION: The file  on boot 
environment <u4> contains a log of the upgrade operation. 
INFORMATION: The file  on boot 
environment <u4> contains a log of cleanup operations required. 
INFORMATION: Review the files listed above. Remember that all of the files 
are located on boot environment <u4>. Before you activate boot environment 
<u4>, 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 <u4> is complete. 
Installing failsafe 
Failsafe install is complete.

Okay, your new BE is upgraded. You can use the lumount command to take a look around the environment and make any changes if required.Once you’re ready to roll, activate the new BE with:

# luactivate u4

The output will look like:

Generating partition and slice information for ABE <u4> 
Boot menu exists.      

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

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 fallback to the currently working boot environment:      

1. Do *not* change *hard* disk order in the BIOS.      

2. Boot from the Solaris Install CD or Network and bring the system to 
Single User mode.      

3. Mount the Parent boot environment root slice to some directory (like 
/mnt). You can use the following command to mount:      

     mount -Fufs /dev/dsk/c1d0s0 /mnt      

4. Run <luactivate> utility with out any arguments from the Parent boot 
environment root slice, as shown below:      

     /mnt/sbin/luactivate      

5. luactivate, activates the previous working boot environment and 
indicates the result.      

6. Exit Single User mode and reboot the machine.      

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

Modifying boot archive service 
GRUB menu is on device: </dev/md/dsk/d40>. 
Filesystem type for menu device: <ufs>. 
Activation of boot environment <u4> successful.

And the message isn’t kidding about making sure you shut down properly – the last, critical steps of the activation are performed during system shutdown, so make sure you use something like init 6 rather than halt or reboot. Remember, halt and reboot don’t shut the box down properly, they simple unmount the filesystems and reboot. Baaad. Never use them.Shut the box down like this:

# init 6 
updating /platform/i86pc/boot_archive...this may take a minute

and when it comes back up you’ll be running an upgraded Solaris. If you’re upgrading an x86 box to update 4, it may prompt you to set a keyboard locale on the way up (especially if you have a PS/2 keyboard, or none plugged in at all). The host will not complete booting until it gets this manual intervention, so be careful when upgrading a host you have no console access to.

You’ll want to do your usual testing and then use ludelete to drop the old BE and then you can remirror your disks. So easy:

# lustatus 
Boot Environment           Is       Active Active    Can    Copy 
Name                       Complete Now    On Reboot Delete Status 
-------------------------- -------- ------ --------- ------ ---------- 
u2                         yes      no     no        yes    - 
u4                         yes      yes    yes       no     - 
# ludelete u2 
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. 
Updating GRUB menu on device </dev/md/dsk/d40> 
Boot environment <u2> deleted. 
# metaclear d20 ; metattach d40 d30 
d20: Mirror is cleared 
d40: submirror d30 is attached 
# metaclear d23 ; metattach d43 d33 
d23: Mirror is cleared 
d43: submirror d33 is attached 
# metastat -c d40 
d40              m  8.0GB d10 d30 (resync-12%) 
    d10          s  8.0GB c0d0s0 
    d30          s  8.0GB c1d0s0

Now, your mirrors will resync and you’re back in business with mirrored disks.

Now, how easy was that? In my next LU walkthrough, I’ll cover using LiveUpgrade to apply patches to a host.