Solaris Live Upgrade Requirements

Before you install and use Solaris Live Upgrade, become familiar with these requirements.

Solaris Live Upgrade System Requirements

Solaris Live Upgrade is included in the Solaris software. You need to install the Solaris Live Upgrade packages on your current OS. The release of the Solaris Live Upgrade packages must match the release of the OS you are upgrading to. For example, if your current OS is the Solaris 9 release and you want to upgrade to the Solaris Express 5/07 release, you need to install the Solaris Live Upgrade packages from the Solaris Express 5/07 release.

Table 3-1 lists releases that are supported by Solaris Live Upgrade.

Table 3-1 Supported Solaris Releases

Installing Solaris Live Upgrade

You can install the Solaris Live Upgrade packages by using the following:

• The pkgadd command. The Solaris Live Upgrade packages are SUNWlucfg, SUNWlur, and SUNWluu, and these packages must be installed in that order.

• An installer on the Solaris Operating System DVD, the Solaris Software - 2 CD, or a network installation image.

Be aware that the following patches might need to be installed for the correct operation of Solaris Live Upgrade.

ERROR: Cannot find or is not executable: 
</sbin/biosdev>.
ERROR: One or more patches required 
by Live Upgrade has not been installed.

For instructions about installing the Solaris Live Upgrade software, see Installing Solaris Live Upgrade.

Required Packages

If you have problems with Solaris Live Upgrade, you might be missing packages. In the following table, check that your OS has the listed packages , which are required to use Solaris Live Upgrade.

For the Solaris 10 release:

• If you install one of the following software groups, these software groups contain all the required Solaris Live Upgrade packages.

  • Entire Solaris Software Group Plus OEM Support

  • Entire Solaris Software Group

  • Developer Solaris Software Group

  • End User Solaris Software Group

• If you install one of these Software Groups, then you might not have all the packages required to use Solaris Live Upgrade.

  • Core System Support Software Group

  • Reduced Network Support Software Group

For information about software groups, see Disk Space Recommendations for Software Groups in Solaris Express Installation Guide: Planning for Installation and Upgrade.

Table 3-2 Required Packages for Solaris Live Upgrade

To check for packages on your system, type the following command.

% pkginfo package_name

Solaris Live Upgrade Disk Space Requirements

Follow general disk space requirements for an upgrade. See Chapter 4, System Requirements, Guidelines, and Upgrade (Planning), in Solaris Express Installation Guide: Planning for Installation and Upgrade.

To estimate the file system size that is needed to create a boot environment, start the creation of a new boot environment. The size is calculated. You can then abort the process.

The disk on the new boot environment must be able to serve as a boot device. Some systems restrict which disks can serve as a boot device. Refer to your system's documentation to determine if any boot restrictions apply.

The disk might need to be prepared before you create the new boot environment. Check that the disk is formatted properly:

• Identify slices large enough to hold the file systems to be copied.

• Identify file systems that contain directories that you want to share between boot environments rather than copy. If you want a directory to be shared, you need to create a new boot environment with the directory put on its own slice. The directory is then a file system and can be shared with future boot environments. For more information about creating separate file systems for sharing, see Guidelines for Selecting Slices for Shareable File Systems.

Solaris Live Upgrade Requirements if Creating RAID-1 Volumes (Mirrors)

Solaris Live Upgrade uses Solaris Volume Manager technology to create a boot environment that can contain file systems that are RAID-1 volumes (mirrors). Solaris Live Upgrade does not implement the full functionality of Solaris Volume Manager, but does require the following components of Solaris Volume Manager.

Table 3-3 Required Components for Solaris Live Upgrade and RAID-1 Volumes