[pca] PCA & LiveUpgrade questions and comments

[Ben Taylor]

On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 5:32 PM, Don Jackson
<pca at clark-communications.com> wrote:
>
> On Feb 11, 2010, at 8:33 AM, Rajiv Gunja wrote:
>
> Martin,
> We should also note that luupgrade will install all patches in a given
> directory in sequence. You have built into PCA, the logic to install a few
> cyclic redundant patches (120011-14, 122660-10 and 125547-02) which SUN
> requires to be installed before using LU, but luupgrade will not install.
>
> luupgrade will work fine if you have already installed LU patch cluster,
> else I would suggest using PCA for patching standalone OS or OS running
> non-global zones.
>
> Here is what I do: 1. Upgrade SUNWlu packages to the one from U6
> DVD.(SUNWluu, SUNWlur, SUNWlucfg and SUNWluzone) 2. Install latest "patch
> utility patch" and Zone/LU patch (can be installed in multi-user and does
> not require a reboot - 121428, 121430 and 119254) 3. Create BE and mount it
> (I always use explicit directory to mount the BE, as I script most of it) 4.
> Patch the BE.
>
> Yes, that is very similar to what I am doing now:
> I install the solaris10_u8 image, then I install the following two patches:
> 119255 70 < 72 RS-  22 SunOS 5.10_x86: Install and Patch Utilities Patch
> 121431 43 < 44 ---  66 SunOS 5.8_x86 5.9_x86 5.10_x86: Live Upgrade Patch
> Then I reboot (not 100% sure this is necessary),
> Then I create the new BE, mount, patch, unmount, and activate the new BE.
> So far, so good.
> I am going to experiment with installing the two patches above in the Finish
> script of a JumpStart install, so that once the install is done, I am ready
> to finish the patching via a new BE.
> I can't believe I didn't know about Live Upgrade before now, and that anyone
> would not use after understanding it!

There are times when it becomes frustrating.  I ran into a failsafe boot bug
where my separate /var didn't get mounted but the /var/home did.

When it came time to do a live upgrade, it always failed the lucreate.
On this particular system, I eventually tracked down that the ROOT device had
a /var/home directory created in it.  Of course, that meant having to take the
system down to failsafe, clean the dir, and then redo the lucreate.
Now it's working again...

> The final piece of this puzzle will be if I can ever make jumpstart installs
> of flash archives with ZFS root ever work.  If I ever can, then I can build
> the patched OS as per the above,
> then replicate via subsequent JumpStart installs.

JET can do this, and has been able to for over a year.  Check Bigadmin for
a link, or catch me offlist and I'll be happy to help.

Ben