Very Computer

I am interested in hearing your experience on upgrading solaris 2.3 to
2.4. I heard from a few people at the Sun Solaris Admin class that
upgrading from 2.3 to 2.4 was not very smooth and caused them a lot of
trouble at the time. I was wondering if things have been improved.
Would you share your story? Thanks.

-Phil

Quote:

>I am interested in hearing your experience on upgrading solaris 2.3 to
>2.4. I heard from a few people at the Sun Solaris Admin class that
>upgrading from 2.3 to 2.4 was not very smooth and caused them a lot of
>trouble at the time. I was wondering if things have been improved.
>Would you share your story? Thanks.

>-Phil

        Of course, if your machine is just a workstation, you're
probably ok.
j.
--
Jay Scott               512-835-3553

Applied Research Labs, Computer Science Div.
University of Texas at Austin

Quote:Scott) writes:
>If your machine is small, you're likely to escape unscathed.  I have large
>machines, and did an unscientific survey of other large machines, and only
>one claimed to have accomplished an upgrade.

Cheers,

Rob
--
UUCP:   ...!mcsun!uknet!warwick!cudcv   PHONE:  +44 1203 523037

Rob McMahon, Computing Services, Warwick University, Coventry CV4 7AL, England

-Phil

--

: I am interested in hearing your experience on upgrading solaris 2.3 to
: 2.4. I heard from a few people at the Sun Solaris Admin class that
: upgrading from 2.3 to 2.4 was not very smooth and caused them a lot of
: trouble at the time. I was wondering if things have been improved.
: Would you share your story? Thanks.

It probably depends on your environment, but my upgrade was seemless.
I had to re-modify a couple of system files, but for the most part,
things went along nicely.

Just be sure to back up first.  And maybe make hard copies of
important system files.

-Michael McKnight

Quote:>>> I am interested in hearing your experience on upgrading solaris 2.3
>>> to 2.4. I heard from a few people at the Sun Solaris Admin class
>>> that upgrading from 2.3 to 2.4 was not very smooth and caused them a
>>> lot of trouble at the time. I was wondering if things have been
>>> improved. Would you share your story? Thanks.

One caveat: make sure you have a *lot* of space free on your /opt
partition. The upgrade needs to move a lot of stuff around and that's
where it wants to do it's work.

--

PGP Public Key: Ask for one today!  \ being placed on a pedestal is a right,
http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/ratinox/ \ not a priviledge! -A cat's guide to life

Here is my upgrade story.........

Configuration : 1 SS20 256M (NIS+ server), 3 SS2 64M.

After a Total of 24 hours .... Everything works fine except
the automounter on the SS20... :-(

Comments :

Make A GOOD backup before you start.
Disconnect the router if your on a subnet ( otherwise you lose maybe some mail)
Printout every systemfile in /etc & if possible cp them to an preserved disk.
( Dont forget the rcx.d/* files ......)
Don't forget restoring your Calendars and mailboxes /var/mail, etc
The upgrade option didn't work ......
Never Panic, everything is fixable.....
Dump your nistables to /etc/formats, just in Case off.......
Get the recommended patchluster......

Get Proctool 2.4.2 and See a performance increase about 15% .......

It was heavy but I succeeded, The main fault I made was the following.....
only root could login after the the first installation, I thought it were
the credentials of nisplus but it was the automounter....

He gave even errors after an sys-unconfig .... Couldn't create SVC_tli (some thing
like that.)

Frank "2.4" Weyns,
PS: If all would go without any problem........
                 Would You have the same jobsatisfaction when all is ready ????

--

                \=/,         _-===-_-====-_-===-_-==========-_-====-_

      /\  /\   / (___,,,}_--=                                          )
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     )   /^\/   _)          (_  mailed by Frank Weyns.                   )
     )   _ /  / _)            (  Reach him at:                            )

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--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Disclaimer: the above posting does not reflect the opinion of my employer.
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The upgrade worked "better", but both machines are experiencing bizarre
name service/NIS problems.

When I try to log in anywhere but the console, the login session seems to hang
or just go very slowly for several minutes.  Sometimes you can actually log in,
other times it just times out.

On the freshly installed machine, I can't get dns or NIS to work at all.  Even
shutting down ypbind and changing the /etc/nsswitch.conf file to add dns on the
hosts line didn't help.  My network parameters and /etc/resolv.conf file are
just fine, but I still get this bizarre timeout on any hostname or NIS map
lookups.

Any clues?  As you can imagine, I'm not terribly impressed, but I don't know
anyone who has had this problem.

Thanks,

- Scott

--
---------( I don't even work for HP.  How could I speak for them? )----------
J. Scott Farrow - System Administrator - NSR Information Inc.
Working at (but not for) Hewlett Packard SESD, 3404 E. Harmony Road, MS 7

Installing the latest jumbo patch, 101945-27, has fixed the NIS problem.  
However, I still can't get DNS to work by itself.

- Scott

--
---------( I don't even work for HP.  How could I speak for them? )----------
J. Scott Farrow - System Administrator - NSR Information Inc.
Working at (but not for) Hewlett Packard SESD, 3404 E. Harmony Road, MS 7

The upgrade on my SS10 server failed with not enough spare disk space, so
I had to reinstall.  It was a pain, but there again I did some
reconfiguring and improved the overall system balance, so there was a
sort of silver lining...

SUMMARY: on a SPARCstation you might get away with it.  Assume you might
not, and have a reliable backup *before* you put the CD in the drive and
cross your fingers.
--
Peter Clinch                  Dundee University & Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust
Tel 44 1382 660111 x 3637     Medical Physics, Ninewells Hospital
Fax 44 1382 640177            Dundee DD1 9SY Scotland UK

if you still have problems you can call 1-800-363-6200 or send email to

I had severe problems with NSkit 1.2 and DNS lookups.
Am happy with NSKit 1.1 Beta 12.

Swamy

: Re my upgrade woes with Solaris 2.4 on an IPX:

: Installing the latest jumbo patch, 101945-27, has fixed the NIS problem.  
: However, I still can't get DNS to work by itself.

: - Scott

: --
: ---------( I don't even work for HP.  How could I speak for them? )----------
: J. Scott Farrow - System Administrator - NSR Information Inc.
: Working at (but not for) Hewlett Packard SESD, 3404 E. Harmony Road, MS 7

For another thing, everybody acts like re-installing is trivial.
It is far from it.  Oh, sure, it is for a small machine, but let's
remember, I have two SSAs, prestoserve, 10 total tape drives, 1.5 GB
mem, wide and narrow differential scsi controllers, two fddi interfaces,
and so on.  You don't just "re-install".  You lose all of your NIS, DNS,
syslog, inittab, etc/system, /etc/*.conf configurations.  You lose all
your mount points in /, /etc/vfstab, and so on.  Think /etc/vfstab is
simple?  If you have a trivial SS10, I'll bet.  But remember, I have to
restore /etc/vfstab in stages -- because the SSA software isn't automatically
there.  Furthermore, because we wish to share X with other machines, and
because we want all of our shared material to be on the file server,
the SUNWits package will be put into /opt by the re-install, but will
have to be deleted and re-installed AFTER the networking is restored
else you'll have inconsistencies in /var/sadm/install/contents.

There's about ten other things like this in a large installation.
If the upgrade would work, it should be able to do a pkgchk and
determine that xgl and xil are not in /opt, they're in /opt/depot.
But the upgrade won't play ball, because /opt/depot is partly on
an SSA -- which the upgrade can't operate.

sorry.  the upgrade is a hot button for me....
j.
--
Jay Scott               512-835-3553

Applied Research Labs, Computer Science Div.
University of Texas at Austin

: sorry.  the upgrade is a hot button for me....

Don't *you* go apologising!

--
Peter Clinch                  Dundee University & Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust
Tel 44 1382 660111 x 3637     Medical Physics, Ninewells Hospital
Fax 44 1382 640177            Dundee DD1 9SY Scotland UK