live_upgrade man page on Solaris

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live_upgrade(5)	      Standards, Environments, and Macros      live_upgrade(5)

NAME
       live_upgrade - overview of Live Upgrade feature

DESCRIPTION
       The  Live  Upgrade feature of the Solaris operating environment enables
       you to maintain multiple operating system images on a single system. An
       image—called  a	boot  environment, or BE—represents a set of operating
       system and application software packages. The BEs might contain differ‐
       ent operating system and/or application versions.

       On  a  system  with  the	 Solaris Live Upgrade software, your currently
       booted OS environment is referred to as your active, or current BE. You
       have  one  active, or current BE; all others are inactive. You can per‐
       form any number of modifications to inactive BEs on  the	 same  system,
       then  boot  from	 one of those BEs. If there is a failure or some unde‐
       sired behavior in the newly booted BE, Live Upgrade software  makes  it
       easy for you to fall back to the previously running BE.

       Live  Upgrade  software includes a full suite of commands, listed below
       and described in individual man pages, which implement all of the  Live
       Upgrade features and functions.

       The  following  are some of the tasks you can perform with Live Upgrade
       software:

	   o	  You can make one or more copies  of  the  currently  running
		  system.

	   o	  You  can  upgrade to a new OS version on a second boot envi‐
		  ronment, then boot from that environment. If you choose, you
		  can then fall back to your original boot environment or boot
		  from yet another environment.

	   o	  You can install application or OS packages to a  boot	 envi‐
		  ronment, then boot from that environment.

	   o	  You  can install OS patches to a boot environment, then boot
		  from that environment.

	   o	  From a flash archive, you can install an OS to a boot	 envi‐
		  ronment,  then  boot from that environment. See flar(1M) for
		  information on administering flash archives.

	   o	  You can split and rejoin file systems in a new BE. For exam‐
		  ple,	you  can separate /usr, /var, and /opt from /, putting
		  them on their own partitions.	 Conversely,  you  could  join
		  these file systems on a single partition under /.

	   o	  You  can mount any or all of the filesystems of a BE that is
		  not active, compare the files in any pair of BEs, delete  or
		  rename a BE, and perform other administrative tasks.

       The  Live  Upgrade  software  supports  upgrade	from any valid Solaris
       installation medium, including a CD-ROM, an NFS or UFS directory, or  a
       flash archive. (See flash_archive(4) for a description of the flash ar‐
       chive feature.)

       In simplest terms, a BE, for Live Upgrade, consists of the  disk	 slice
       containing a root file system and the file system/device (usually disk)
       slice entries specified in vfstab(4). This set of slices is not limited
       to a single disk. This means that you can have multiple BEs on a single
       device, or have a BE spread across slices on multiple devices.  The  BE
       includes	 any  non-global  zones(5)  that  might exist on the system as
       well. If any of the non-global zones in the BE have separate file  sys‐
       tems,  the disk slices making up these file systems are considered part
       of the BE.

       The minimal requirement for a Live Upgrade BE is the same  as  for  any
       Solaris	boot  environment:  you must have root (/) and usr filesystems
       (which might both reside on /). All filesystems	except	for  /,	 /usr,
       /var, and /opt can be shared among multiple BEs, if you choose.

       Each  BE	 must  have a unique copy of the file systems that contain the
       OS—/, /usr, /var, and  /opt.  For  Live	Upgrade	 purposes,  these  are
       referred	 to  as non-shareable (sometimes referred to as critical) file
       systems. With other file systems, such as /export or  /home,  you  have
       the  option  of	copying the files to a new BE or, the default, sharing
       them among BEs. These are referred to as shareable file systems.	 A  BE
       is  made	 up of a unique copy of one or more non-shareable file systems
       and zero or more copies of shareable file systems.

       Live Upgrade commands support an option (-X) that enables  XML  output.
       Characteristics	of  the	 XML  are  specified in a DTD shipped with the
       product. XML output enables programmatic parsing	 of  portions  of  the
       command output.

       Live  Upgrade  supports	the  notion  of	 a BE description, an optional
       attribute of a BE. A BE description can be of any length and format. It
       might be a text string or a binary file. See ludesc(1M) for details.

       Below  is  an  example set of steps that you might follow in the use of
       Live Upgrade software. This example is by no means  exhaustive  of  the
       possibilities of the use of the Live Upgrade software.

	   1.	  You  create a new BE, using lucreate(1M). The first time you
		  create a BE on a given system, you must designate  the  cur‐
		  rent Solaris operating environment as a BE (give it a name).
		  You then specify a name and a set of	device	(disk)	slices
		  you  want to use for the new BE. The lucreate command copies
		  the contents of the current  Solaris	operating  environment
		  (now a BE) to the new BE.

		  After	 you  have  created  additional	 BEs, you can use a BE
		  other than the current BE as the source for a new BE.	 Also,
		  you  can create an empty BE onto which you can later install
		  a flash archive.

	   2.	  Using luupgrade(1M), you upgrade the OS version on your  new
		  BE  (or  on  yet  another BE you created with lucreate). The
		  luupgrade enables you to  upgrade  an	 OS  (from  any	 valid
		  Solaris installation medium, including a flash archive), add
		  or remove packages (OS or application), and  add  or	remove
		  patches.

	   3.	  You use luactivate(1M) to make the new BE bootable. The next
		  time you reboot your system, you will come up in the new BE.

	   4.	  Using lucompare(1M), you compare the	system	files  on  two
		  different  BEs.  This utility gives you a comprehensive list
		  of the files that have differences.

	   5.	  Using lumount(1M), you mount the filesystems of a BE that is
		  not  active, enabling you to make changes. When you are fin‐
		  ished with the changes, use luumount(1M) to unmount the BE's
		  file systems.

	   6.	  Upon	booting a new BE, you discover a failure or some other
		  undesirable  behavior.  Using	 the  procedure	 specified  in
		  luactivate, you can fall back to the previous BE.

	   7.	  Using	 ludelete  then lucreate, you reassign file systems on
		  the now-deleted BE to different disk	slices.	 You  separate
		  /opt	and  /var from / on the new BE. Also, you specify that
		  swap be spread over slices on multiple disks.

       The following is a summary  of  Live  Upgrade  commands.	 All  commands
       require root privileges.

       lu		    FMLI-based	interface for creating and administer‐
			    ing BEs. No longer recommended for customer use.

       luactivate	    Designate a BE as the BE to	 boot  from  upon  the
			    next reboot of the system.

       lucancel		    Cancel a previously scheduled operation.

       lucompare	    Compare the contents of two BEs.

       lucreate		    Create a BE.

       lucurr		    Display the name of the current BE.

       ludelete		    Delete a BE.

       ludesc		    Add or change BE descriptions.

       lufslist		    List the file systems on a specified BE.

       lumake		    Re-create a BE based on the active BE.

       lumount, luumount    Mount, unmount file systems of a specified BE.

       lurename		    Rename a BE.

       lustatus		    For all BEs on a system, report on whether a BE is
			    active, active upon the next reboot, in the	 midst
			    of	a copy operation, and whether a copy operation
			    is scheduled for it.

       luupgrade	    Upgrade an OS and install application software  on
			    a  BE. Such software includes flash archives, com‐
			    plete OS installations, OS and  application	 pack‐
			    ages, and OS patches.

FILES
       /etc/lutab    list of BEs on the system

SEE ALSO
       luactivate(1M),	lucancel(1M), lucompare(1M), lucreate(1M), lucurr(1M),
       ludelete(1M), ludesc(1M), lufslist(1M), lumake(1M), lumount(1M),	 lure‐
       name(1M), lustatus(1M), luupgrade(1M), lutab(4), zones(5)

NOTES
       Correct	operation  of Solaris Live Upgrade requires that a limited set
       of patch	 revisions  be	installed  for	a  given  OS  version.	Before
       installing  or  running	Live  Upgrade, you are required to install the
       limited set of patch revisions. Make sure you have  the	most  recently
       updated	patch  list  by consulting http://sunsolve.sun.com. Search for
       the infodoc 72099 on the SunSolve web site.

       It is possible for an operating	system	upgrade	 to  remove  installed
       patches. Prior to such an upgrade, use analyze_patches, as described in
       luupgrade(1M), to determine which, if any, patches will be removed.

       For versions of the Solaris operating system prior to Solaris 10,  Live
       Upgrade	supports the release it is distributed on and up to three mar‐
       keting releases back. For example, if you obtained  Live	 Upgrade  with
       Solaris 9 (including a Solaris 9 upgrade), that version of Live Upgrade
       supports Solaris versions 2.6, Solaris 7, and Solaris 8, in addition to
       Solaris	9. No version of Live Upgrade supports a Solaris version prior
       to Solaris 2.6.

       Starting with version 10 of the Solaris operating system, Live  Upgrade
       supports	 the  release  it  is  distributed  on and up to two marketing
       releases back. For example, if you obtained Live Upgrade	 with  Solaris
       10  (including a Solaris 10 upgrade), that version of Live Upgrade sup‐
       ports Solaris 8 and Solaris 9, in addition to Solaris 10.

SunOS 5.10			  14 Mar 2007		       live_upgrade(5)
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