Previously, I wrote that I was looking intoconverting several Sun Sparcstations/Ultras fromSolar

2007-12-25 11:40:00

Previously, I wrote that I was looking into

converting several Sun Sparcstations/Ultras from

Solaris 2.4, 2.5, and 2.5.1 to 2.6. They're running

CDE, DNS, NIS+.

I wanted to know if there are any gotchas to doing an

upgrade versus a cold install.

Is there a recommended file system layout for Solaris

2.6, i.e. the minimum sizes required for /, /usr,

/var, /opt, /tmp, etc.?

As I don't know anything about mirroring, is there

someone who can point me to a place that has

information on how to set it up as well as whether I

need it (I "inherited" these machines).

My thanks to the following people who responded:

Jim Harmon <jim@telecnnct.com>:

I'm experimenting with the 2.6 upgrade on my SPARC5.

(my SA workstation)

Last week I did the 2.6 upgrade from 2.5.1 with all

patches.

The upgrade went very well, EXCEPT that the

calculated partition size for /usr was too small.

(I pushed it by sellecting a COMPLETE 2.6 delivery,

including OEM support. We do developing here and I

wanted to see what was delivered.)

I ended up having to install it 2 times, because the

book -which says the installer can determine what

wasn't installed and will start where you left off-

was wrong. It didn't detect what was already installed

(from the previous 2.6 upgrade).

The reason I ran out of /usr space was that the

upgrade COPIED all the existing 2.6 files on the

system to <filename>:2.6, and then installed the man

pages again from scratch. This added about 15% more

overhead

than the program calculated, so I ended up not being

able to install about 30 packages from the total

200(?)+ packages in the installation kit.

I WAS able to manually install the uninstalled

packages from the command line with the additional

option "-a none", which is NOT included in the

documentation of the install kit.

I think you should have VERY little trouble, if you

are not using a complete installation (standard

workstation, etc.) and if you set a minimum partition

size at least 10% larger than the program selects if

it thinks you need to repartion.

I posted a summary on this earlier this week titled:

"Q & Summary: Upgrading Sol 2.5.1 to 2.6"

Here it is:

=========================cut===========================================

Hi all,

First, I'd like to offer some notes about my upgrade

of Solaris from

2.5.1 to 2.6.

SUMMARY:

SPARCStation5, 64MB RAM, (2) 1GB HD's, external CD

Solaris 2.5.1, full recommended patches.

Numerous GNU packages installed.

Cool things:

o The cdrom-boot install program easily

determined that my existing partitions were

inadequate to install the "Full install" upgrade of 2.6

o The upgrade program recognized all existing

patches, and identified all existing Solaris stuff.

o The upgrade program has the ability to let you

reconfigure the EXISTING partitions as PART of the

upgrades, using NFS, rcp, or other means, and the

repartition utility allows the user to modify the

constraints to setup the partitions, similar to

a freshly-initialized disk.

(I didn't try the web-install interface, but hear

it's really good.)

NOT so cool things:

o The calculated partitions were not big

enough, and a number of packages (32 of them) weren't

added the

first time I tried the upgrade. (almost all in the

/usr partition.)

o The documentation says the install program

will

recognize a failed or incompleted installation, and

will restart the install at the point where it failed.

It doesn't. It began a complete upgrade installation

the second time I ran the program.

o The second time through, only (2) packages

didn't have room to install. (this is because the

installer renamed all the existing man-pages and

other files as "<file>:2.6", taking up twice the

space it needed to.)

o The upgrade program takes much more than the

2 hours they claim, especially if you use a 2x CD and

repartition interactively.

o The documentation does NOT tell you how to

load

individual packages FROM THE SOLARIS INSTALL CD. The

instructions DO show how to install from any OTHER

pkgadd-ready CD.

o The Solaris 2.6 INSTALL CD does not allow

interactive access to the file systems when you have

automounter and vold running (multiuser mode) You

HAVE to be in the CD-Boot environment to see the

filesystems and find the individual packages.

More COOL stuff:

o The Install environment (available after the

install and before reboot) is rich enough to use most

of the basic Solaris (SysV) commands, including ln (I

moved my /usr/share directory to the second disk,

/usr1/share and then symlink'd /usr1/share back to

/usr/share) and pkgadd will work IF YOU ADD the "-a

none" option, to override the default installation

path info (admin dir) which was necessary to allow me

to specify the file-systems I wanted to get the pkg's

from and where to install them.

(This allowed me to add JUST the two failed packages

without reinstalling everything after moving the

/usr/share stuff. --man pages mostly)

o The summary files are VERY clear and easy to

use for identifying any failed modules and how to fix

them. (These are VERBOSE to the max.)

Trevor Paquette <TrevorPaquette@mcc.net>:

Go with ONE big / filesystem and put everything under

that. This has saved me alot of grief in the long

run. I never have to worry about running out of space

under /opt, /var, /usr etc.. I make /tmp a TMPFS

filesystem and I'm off and running. I usually make /

about 1 - 1.5GB in size.

Thanks again!

      Ju

      julienlim@rocketmail.com

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