SUMMARY: Sol10u3, Kernel patch, zones on zfs, 120011-14 won't install!

This was pretty painful. I'm sending a long answer because when I
Googled for various error messages I was not finding anything useful,
so perhaps this will help soneone else.

First I learned that Solaris 10 does not support zonepath on zfs
filesystems. Moved zones to ufs filesystems. No change.

Then, research revealed that it might be a problem with lofs mounts in
zones. Removed lofs mounts. After removing the lofs mounts, 120011-14
installed partway and failed with errors about being unable to mount
zones.


I tried patchadd with -G (with and without -M) and got this error:
           0 Patch 120011-14 is for global zone only - cannot be
installed on non-global zone
 I experimented with various flags to patchadd and install_cluster,
and even re-downloaded  120011-14 because one run said it was
corrupted. After I re-downloaded 120011-14,  I tried re-running the
10_Recommended cluster, at which point 120011-14 failed but 127127-11
*succeeded*. This left the system in a nasty state with these
(ultimately bogus) errors when I tried to access any zones:

# zoneadm -z stage boot
zoneadm: zone 'stage': missing or invalid brand
# zonecfg -z stage
Zone stage is inconsistent: missing brand attribute

Note: I have never set brands in any zone.

I took a little detour into playing with the xml files and adding the
brand attribute
(which *I think* would look something like):

<zone name="sandbox" zonepath="/space/sandbox" autoboot="true" brand="native">

but that didn't help. Zones were still not bootable, recieved "bad
document property" and "brand not specified" errors. zonecfg still
complained, and crashed on commit with: Assertion failed: valid != 0,
file ../common/libzonecfg.c, line 1128

Then I tried making a *new* zone and got similar  errors. At that
point, having lost use of the zones, and unable to go forward with the
patching (and under the gun not to go backwards because of scheduled
planned work) I figured I'd proved that the system was in an unstable
state. So, I deleted all the zones on the system with
  zonecfg -z <zonename> delete -f

At that point, all the patches and the install cluster ran, and new
zones seem to be working fine. I had to rebuild all the zones, and
this had been a production server with production zones, so it is
making  for a long weekend.

I'm a little annoyed that sun documentation shows so many *examples*
of zones with zonepath on zfs, like f'rinstance this one:
http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/howtoguides/moving_containers.jsp

Although it *is* also documented that you should not do it. Sometimes
both at once, like this section that explains how to do it in detail
before saying not to:
http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/819-5461/gcsxk?l=en&q=zone&a=view

I received only one response, from Doug Yatcilla at Purdue, who
pointed me to the "unsupported" information in the Best Practices FAQ:
http://www.solarisinternals.com/wiki/index.php/ZFS_Best_Practices_Guide#ZFS_and_Zones
(which I am certainly going to memorize)

thanks, Betsy

On Thu, Jun 5, 2008 at 10:57 PM, Elizabeth Schwartz
<betsy.schwartz@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm running Solaris 10 u03 (11/06) on a Sun v210 hooked up to a
> clariion array, with some zones living on zfs filesystems on a zpool
> on the clariion. I'm trying to install the 10_Recommended patch
> cluster and running into a world of pain. Taking it apart, I narrowed
> it down to 120011-14 If I run patchadd -M on this patch  with the
> zones down I get:
>
> Failed to mount non-global zone stage
> Could not successfully create environment
>
> if I run it with zones up I get:
> Checking zone states for halted state.
>
> ** Zone stage is not in a halted state.
> ** Zone dev is not in a halted state.
> ** Zone sandbox is not in a halted state.
>
> ** All non-global zones must be in the halted state before installing
> ** the specified patches.  Halt all non-global zones and then
> ** execute patchadd again.
>
> Could not successfully create environment for 'deferred activation patching'.
> --------
>
> Reading the README I found this gem:
> NOTE 25: Due to CR 6581814, patching zones where the zonepath resides on zfs
>         is not supported.  This will be fixed in a later release of 119254
>         greater than revision 42.  Once this is fixed, applying 120011-14
>         to a system with zones where one or more zonepath's resides on zfs
>         will work assuming the revision of 119254 that fixes 6581814 has
>         been applied.  See Note 15.
>
> Can that possibly mean that there's no way to install this patch?
> CR 6581814 is supposedly fixed in 119254-53 which I *do* have installed.
>
> another note refers to
> http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/sundocs/articles/patch-wn.jsp which has no
> concrete help
>
> Any help much appreciated!
>
> thanks Betsy
>
> (PS I sent a question to sunmanagers a few months ago about Solaris 10
> u4 and patch clusters, but I never sent back a summary. I was never
> certain that I completely understood it, and  downgraded to Sol10 U3,
> which was doing OK for me until now...)
_______________________________________________
sunmanagers mailing list
sunmanagers@sunmanagers.org
http://www.sunmanagers.org/mailman/listinfo/sunmanagers