Solaris 11.1 Update from ISO
Sometimes you don't have a Solaris IPS local repo and just want to update to a newer SRU (Support Repository Update). You can check versions at Oracle support and last check this Doc ID contained a good list: Oracle Solaris 11.1 Support Repository Updates (SRU) Index (Doc ID 1501435.1)
Few things to note:
- In this example I updated from SRU 18.5 to SRU 19.6. Most of my updates was actually all the way from the GA release to the latest SRU. And for me I had to have both the Oracle online repo as well as the local incremental SRU set for the update to catch all possible dependencies.
- If updating to a latest SRU and coming from many versions back you might also see something similar to below when the update tries to activate the new BE (boot environment):
Error while accessing "/dev/rdsk/c2d1s0": No such file or directory
pkg: unable to activate solaris-1
I have not 100% figured out why this is happening and if its just related to LDOM's but so far once or twice when this occurred either one of the following or a combination of the following allowed me to manually activate the BE. Reboot the updated guest, just doing a simple zpool status, destroying the newly created BE and redoing the update. Like I said all or one of the above steps. I have a suspicion its as simple as doing a zfs status and then the activate worked.
Update 7.18.14: The last upgrade I did I encountered the unable to activate error and a simple zpool status allowed me to do beadm activate.
Lets start by checking the existing version. This indicates we are at SRU 18.5 in this case.
# pkg list entire NAME (PUBLISHER) VERSION IFO entire 0.5.11-0.175.1.18.0.5.0 i--
Since I have the luxury of staging on NFS we might as well mount the repo direct. Another option since this is a LDOM is to add a virtual cdrom the guest. Note below I am setting both the incremental repo as well as the Oracle support repo. Use pkg unset-publisher to clear entries you don't want.
# mount -F hsfs /software/solaris/sol-11_1_19_6_0-incr-repo.iso /mnt # pkg set-publisher -g file:///mnt/repo solaris # pkg set-publisher -P -g http://pkg.oracle.com/solaris/release/ solaris # pkg publisher PUBLISHER TYPE STATUS P LOCATION solaris origin online F file:///mnt/repo/ solaris origin online F http://pkg.oracle.com/solaris/release/
Now lets do the update. Since the README for SRU 19.6 explained license around java we need to include the --accept flag. Be warned the README might contain more information you need to adhere to for a successful update. In my case to be extra safe even though Solaris can maintain multiple BE's (boot environments), I also made a snapshot of the OS on the storage back end.
# pkg update --accept
Packages to install: 1
Packages to update: 72
Create boot environment: Yes
Create backup boot environment: No
DOWNLOAD PKGS FILES XFER (MB) SPEED
Completed 73/73 2018/2018 99.8/99.8 0B/s
PHASE ITEMS
Removing old actions 238/238
Installing new actions 277/277
Updating modified actions 3265/3265
Updating package state database Done
Updating package cache 72/72
Updating image state Done
Creating fast lookup database Done
A clone of solaris-new-2 exists and has been updated and activated.
On the next boot the Boot Environment solaris-new-3 will be
mounted on '/'. Reboot when ready to switch to this updated BE.
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NOTE: Please review release notes posted at:
https://support.oracle.com/epmos/faces/DocContentDisplay?id=1501435.1
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Lets take a look at the boot environments before reboot.
# beadm list BE Active Mountpoint Space Policy Created -- ------ ---------- ----- ------ ------- solaris-new-1 - - 13.82M static 2014-01-30 08:27 solaris-new-2 N / 3.13M static 2014-05-19 06:37 solaris-new-3 R - 12.37G static 2014-06-18 04:55 solaris-orig - - 11.73M static 2013-07-09 10:26 solaris-sru14.5 - - 19.87M static 2014-01-29 06:07 # reboot
After a reboot the Solaris version and BE looks like this.
# pkg list entire NAME (PUBLISHER) VERSION IFO entire 0.5.11-0.175.1.19.0.6.0 i-- # beadm list BE Active Mountpoint Space Policy Created -- ------ ---------- ----- ------ ------- solaris-new-1 - - 13.82M static 2014-01-30 08:27 solaris-new-2 - - 14.45M static 2014-05-19 06:37 solaris-new-3 NR / 12.49G static 2014-06-18 04:55 solaris-orig - - 11.73M static 2013-07-09 10:26 solaris-sru14.5 - - 19.87M static 2014-01-29 06:07
