LiveUpgrade Product Page (Doc ID 1381115.1)

Last updated on AUGUST 28, 2023

Applies to:

Purpose

This document contains the Live Upgrade Product Page

Scope

Description

Solaris Live Upgrade provides a method of upgrading a system while the system continues to operate. While your current boot environment is running, you can duplicate the boot environment, then upgrade the duplicate. Or, rather than upgrading, you can install a Solaris Flash archive on a boot environment. The original system configuration remains fully functional and unaffected by the upgrade or installation of an archive. When you are ready, you can activate the new boot environment by rebooting the system. If a failure occurs, you can quickly revert to the original boot environment with a simple reboot. This switch eliminates the normal downtime of the test and evaluation process.

Solaris Live Upgrade enables you to duplicate a boot environment without affecting the currently running system. You can then do the following:

• Upgrade a system.
• Change the current boot environment's disk configuration to different file system types, sizes, and layouts on the new boot environment.
• Maintain numerous boot environments with different images. For example, you can create one boot environment that contains current patches and create another boot environment that contains an Update release.

Some understanding of basic system administration is necessary before using Solaris Live Upgrade.

Vocabulary

• PBE - primary boot environment. The boot environment you are running / booted to when creating an alternate boot environment.
• ABE - alternate boot environment. An inactive boot environment. Can be more multiple ABEs on a system.
• BE - general term meaning boot environment.

Main Commands (there are many "sub" commands - these are the main ones:

• lucreate     - create an ABE
• luupgrade  - upgrade an ABE; (-t, -T) add, remove patches from an ABE; (-p,-P) add,remove pkgs from and ABE
• luactivate   - activate an ABE
• ludelete     - delete a BE
• lustatus     - display the BE names and status

SEE ALSO  luactivate(1M), lucancel(1M), lucompare(1M), lucurr(1M), ludelete(1M), ludesc(1M), lufslist(1M), lumake(1M),
                lumount(1M),  lurename(1M), lustatus(1M), luupgrade(1M), lutab(4), live_upgrade(5), zones(5)  

Compatibility/Patches

The main Live Upgrade patches are 121430-xx for Sparc and 121431-xx for x86

121430-XX | SunOS 5.8 5.9 5.10: Live Upgrade Patch
121431-XX | SunOS 5.8_x86 5.9_x86 5.10_x86: Live Upgrade Patch 

Complete list of Solaris[TM] Live Upgrade Software:
       Minimum Patch Requirements : Solaris Live Upgrade Software Patch Requirements Doc ID 1004881.1


Doc ID 1364140.1 Oracle Solaris Live Upgrade Resource Center
Doc ID 1415915.1 How to use lucreate with detach,attach,preserve with Solaris Volume Manager (SVM) devices
Doc ID 1417657.1 How to Remove All Live Upgrade Configuration
Doc ID 1451868.1 Luupgrade outputs message about a problem generating autoreg_key
Doc ID 1452615.1 After Live Upgrade, new BE fails to boot due to “”ERROR: Last Trap: Fast Data Access MMU Miss”“
Doc ID 1457711.1 Live Upgrade fails with message: /usr/sbin/luupgrade[117]: .//Solaris_10/Tools/Boot/lu.cpio.bz2: cannot open
Doc ID 1461925.1 Liveupgrade failed to create new ABE due to mountpoint=none
Doc ID 1499526.1 Explanation of Live Upgrade LU_DEBUG Levels
Doc ID 1560772.1 Live Upgrade configurations with Zones
Doc ID 1595172.1 How to fix zonepaths issues after booting on new BE (Live-Upgrade) ()
Doc ID 2134459.1 Solaris 10 Upgrade Fails When Mpxio is Enabled on Boot Disk - The Solaris Version (Solaris 10) on slice c0t0d0s0 cannot be upgraded

LU Various Info

- Oracle Solaris 10 1/13 Installation Guide: Live Upgrade and Upgrade Planning

- Restrictions for Using Solaris Live Upgrade (Enda O'Connor)

- live upgrade with SVM and zones

- How to Use VxVM and Solaris Live Upgrade to Install patches on encapsulated root disk (Supported by Symantec)

- System Requirements and Limitations When Using Live Upgrade

- (Overview) / System Requirements and Limitations When Using Solaris Live Upgrade

 - Live Upgrade Survival Guide

Proactive

Details

My Oracle Support provides customers with access to over a million knowledge articles and a vibrant support community of peers and Oracle experts.