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!
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