if you have SVM (solaris volume manager,disk suite,metadevices), you can still liveupgrade….
consider this scenario, the OS lives in mirrored disks d0,d3,d4,d6:
root@myserver # df -h | grep -i md /dev/md/dsk/d0 4.9G 3.2G 1.7G 66% / /dev/md/dsk/d3 9.9G 4.1G 5.7G 42% /usr /dev/md/dsk/d4 9.9G 3.4G 6.3G 35% /var /dev/md/dsk/d6 101G 7.5G 93G 8% /opt /dev/md/dsk/d5 4.9G 4.6G 336M 94% /spare
the metadevices look like this:
d0 -m d10 d20 1 d10 1 1 c1t0d0s0 d20 1 1 c1t1d0s0 d6 -m d16 d26 1 d16 1 1 c1t0d0s6 d26 1 1 c1t1d0s6 d5 -m d15 d25 1 d15 1 1 c1t0d0s5 d25 1 1 c1t1d0s5 d4 -m d14 d24 1 d14 1 1 c1t0d0s4 d24 1 1 c1t1d0s4 d3 -m d13 d23 1 d13 1 1 c1t0d0s3 d23 1 1 c1t1d0s3 d1 -m d11 d21 1 d11 1 1 c1t0d0s1 d21 1 1 c1t1d0s1
So we create two Boot Environments (BE), sol10u6(the current), and sol10u9(the one that will be upgraded)
lucreate -c sol10u6 -n sol10u9
-m /:/dev/md/dsk/d40:ufs,mirror -m /:/dev/dsk/c1t0d0s0:detach,attach,preserve
-m /usr:/dev/md/dsk/d43:ufs,mirror -m /usr:/dev/dsk/c1t0d0s3:detach,attach,preserve
-m /var:/dev/md/dsk/d44:ufs,mirror -m /var:/dev/dsk/c1t0d0s4:detach,attach,preserve
-m /opt:/dev/md/dsk/d46:ufs,mirror -m /opt:/dev/dsk/c1t0d0s6:detach,attach,preserve
Notice we create the alternate metadevices d40,d43,d44 and d46, to substitute d0,d3,d4 and d6 in the sol10u9 BE.
when we boot from the sol10u6 BE we will still see d0,d3,d4 and d6, when we boot the sol10u9 BE we will see d40,d43,d44 and d46.
Next, we create the file to skip auto registration:
# echo "autoreg=disable" > /var/tmp/no-autoreg
Now we run the upgrade:
# luupgrade -k /var/tmp/no-autoreg -u -n sol10u9 -s /sol10u9
after the upgrade, we activate the sol10u9 BE
# luactivate sol10u9
Now, we restart the server, do not use “reboot”!
# init 6
Luckily the server comes up with sol10u9