[pca] PCA w/ LU 'n boot_archive

[Brookins, Neil (Philadelphia)]

There are several sources that recommend removing the boot archive before re-creating it. See below.
But, I agree that it shouldn't be necessary. It doesn't seem to hurt in any way.

http://www.seedsofgenius.net/solaris/solaris-tips-repairing-the-boot-archive

http://sun.drydog.com/faq/7.html  See #7.17 from Pradhap Devarajan

Neil G. Brookins
Identity and Authentication Solutions - IT Global Solutions
Towers Watson
1500 Market Street | Philadelphia, PA 19102
Phone: +1 215 246 6046
neil.brookins at towerswatson.com<mailto:neil.brookins at towerswatson.com>

From: pca-bounces at lists.univie.ac.at [mailto:pca-bounces at lists.univie.ac.at] On Behalf Of Fred
Sent: Monday, March 05, 2012 4:18 PM
To: PCA (Patch Check Advanced) Discussion
Subject: Re: [pca] PCA w/ LU 'n boot_archive

I've never been through this procedure, and I've done a lot of patching using ZFS root on x86 with pca and live upgrade. (Thanks for the article though, I've got it nicely tucked away in case this ever happens to me).

Your method seems sound, but I'm wondering if removing the boot-archive with rm is necessary. Doing a bootadm update-archive with the appropriate -R alternate root argument should suffice. Completely removing the boot-archive makes me nervous.

Fred
On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 at 3:57 PM, Brookins, Neil (Philadelphia) <neil.brookins at towerswatson.com<mailto:neil.brookins at towerswatson.com>> wrote:
I recently patched several servers following the general steps shown here:
http://probably.co.uk/patching-a-live-solaris-10-system-with-lu-zfs-and-pca.html

After experiencing a problem on one out of six servers, I found this page:
https://blogs.oracle.com/patch/entry/heads_up_on_kernel_patch
which states that manual update of boot archive is needed. (See issue #2 in the blog)

So, modifying the steps shown in the first web page above, with the new revelations from the second page,
I derive these possible steps:

...
# pca -i -R /.alt.patching

# rm -f /.alt.patching/platform/`uname -m`/boot_archive
# /.alt.patching/usr/sbin/bootadm -R /.alt.patching  update-archive

# luumount patching
...

Can anyone confirm that I'm on the right track here? I'm using ZFS root and non-global zones. I need to use LU to reduce end-user downtime.

BTW, the problem that I experienced after rebooting to the patched server, was that it printed many errors, and then it did panic and rebooted.
It seems to stay up now, but I don't trust it as much since the panic. I'm guessing that the file /kernel/drv/ipsecah.conf was not valid due to the boot archive not getting updated as a part of the patching process.

The error shown below repeated, each time with a different character inside the '' marks.

... genunix: [ID 107833 kern.warning] WARNING: Unexpected token '^H' on line 1 of /kernel/drv/ipsecah.conf
...
... genunix: [ID 107833 kern.warning] WARNING: Unexpected token '' on line 2 of /kernel/drv/ipsecah.conf
... last message repeated 1724 times
...
... savecore: [ID 570001 auth.error] reboot after panic: BAD TRAP: type=31 rp=2a10146eba0 addr=58 mmu_fsr=0 occurr
ed in module "ip" due to a NULL pointer dereference
...

Neil G. Brookins
Identity and Authentication Solutions - IT Global Solutions
Towers Watson
1500 Market Street | Philadelphia, PA 19102
Phone: +1 215 246 6046<tel:%2B1%20215%20246%206046>
neil.brookins at towerswatson.com<mailto:neil.brookins at towerswatson.com>



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