solaris laptop live upgrade
The other day I setup my laptop with an eye to making it
live upgradable, so now it’s time to see if I had a clue what I
was doing.
LUvly
Solaris has a feature called Live Upgrade (LU).
The idea is you clone the system into a free slice
(called a ‘boot environment’ or BE), upgrade that, configure it, etc. -
then boot into it quickly when no-one’s looking.
Should it fail horribly, you just reboot and no-one is any the wiser.
It minimizes downtime for upgrades, and gives you a simple and reliable backout (a snapshot/rollback facility).
BE happy
My laptop is set up with a / slice , swap and a spare slice.
All the user data is on my zpool.
By default, LU will copy over all of / – /var /usr /etc , but also /opt.
If you stick /opt on ZFS, LU will try to copy everything to the new BE, which
a) takes hours and b) probably won’ fit. So I’ve put /opt/csw, /opt/SUNWspro, /opt/whatever on ZFS.
hypnotoad $ df -h -Fzfs
Filesystem size used avail capacity Mounted on
tank/home 16G 31K 14G 1% /export/home
tank/home/dick 16G 461M 14G 4% /export/home/dick
tank/SUNWappserver 16G 125M 14G 1% /opt/SUNWappserver
tank/SUNWspro 16G 468M 14G 4% /opt/SUNWspro
tank/csw 16G 216M 14G 2% /opt/csw
tank/netbeans-5.5 16G 210M 14G 2% /opt/netbeans-5.5
tank/netbeans-5.5.1 16G 132M 14G 1% /opt/netbeans-5.5.1
tank/src 16G 612K 14G 1% /srcThese filesystems will be shared across BEs,
but the ‘OS’ (/var /usr/ /sbin etc) will be copied over to the new BE , then upgraded.
hypnotoad $ df -h -Fufs
Filesystem size used avail capacity Mounted on
/dev/dsk/c0d0s0 5.5G 2.8G 2.6G 52% /get your media
I’m currently running b68 , so first thing to do is download the latest Nevada DVD ISO (b69) to a ZFS filesystem (there’s not enough room in my teeny root slice, and this avoids LU copying it over to the new BE).
hypnotoad $ pfexec zfs create tank/isos
hypnotoad $ pfexec zfs set mountpoint=/isos tank/isos
hypnotoad $ pfexec zfs set copies=1 tank/isosmount the ISO
hypnotoad $ pfexec lofiadm -a /isos/sol-nv-b69-x86-dvd.iso
/dev/lofi/1
hypnotoad $ pfexec mount -F hsfs /dev/lofi/1 /mnt
hypnotoad $ ls /mnt/
Copyright autorun.inf
DeveloperTools autorun.sh
JDS-THIRDPARTYLICENSEREADME boot
License installer
README.txt sddtool
Solaris_11plan your escape
The root filesystem doesn’t need to be backed up (that’s the
whole point!) but I’ll snapshot all the other (ZFS) filesystems just in case:
hypnotoad $ pfexec zfs snapshot -r tank@pre-luthis recursively (-r) snapshots all filesystem in the zpool ‘tank’ with the label ‘pre-lu’
copy your BE
hypnotoad $ pfexec /usr/sbin/lucreate -c b68 -n b69 -m /:/dev/dsk/c0d0s3:ufsthis :
- calls the existing BE ‘b68’ (-c b68)
- creates a new BE called b69 (-n b69)
- clones the root FS (the OS) to the UFS slice ‘c0d0s3’ (-m /:/dev/dsk/c0d0s3:ufs)
the upshot of which is:
Discovering physical storage devices
Discovering logical storage devices
....
....
Making boot environment bootable.
Updating bootenv.rc on ABE .
Population of boot environment successful.
Creation of boot environment successful. We now have 2 BEs (the one we’re in now, and the one we’ll be upgrading):
hypnotoad $ pfexec /usr/sbin/lustatus
Boot Environment Is Active Active Can Copy
Name Complete Now On Reboot Delete Status
------------- ---- --- ---- --- ---—
b68 yes yes yes no -
b69 yes no no yes -upgrade the new BE
hypnotoad $ pfexec /usr/sbin/luupgrade -u -n b69 -s /mnt/that’s :
- do an OS upgrade (-u) …
- … of the ‘b69’ BE (-n b69) …
- … from the b69 ISO (-s /mnt).
This’ll take bloody ages (about an hour on my rubbish laptop).
suck it and see
hypnotoad $ pfexec /usr/sbin/luactivate b69
hypnotoad $ pfexec init 6This’ll create a new default GRUB entry for the new BE. To rollback, either ‘luactivate b68’ or simply reboot and choose the old menu entry.
rolling upgrades
It’s worth knowing that GRUB still boots using the original root fs:
hypnotoad $ df -h -Fufs
Filesystem size used avail capacity Mounted on
/dev/dsk/c0d0s3 5.5G 2.8G 2.6G 52% /
hypnotoad $ pfexec bootadm list-menu
The location for the active GRUB menu is: /dev/dsk/c0d0s0 (not mounted)
The filesystem type of the menu device is
default 2
timeout 10
0 Solaris Express Community Edition snv_68 X86
1 Solaris failsafe
2 b69
3 b69 failsafe
4 b68
5 b68 failsafe which means:
- the best way to edit the menu.lst is using bootadm (which knows where to find it)
- if you delete that partition, you are screwed.
I thought you’d need a dedicated /boot partition if you wanted to easily do rolling upgrades.
In fact, Live Upgrade knows all about GRUB:
hypnotoad $ pfexec /usr/sbin/ludelete b68
The boot environment contains the GRUB menu.
Attempting to relocate the GRUB menu.
Relocating GRUB slice to .
Mounted new GRUB slice .
Updating GRUB state.
Moving GRUB menu.
Installing latest GRUB loader.
stage1 written to partition 1 sector 0 (abs 385560)
stage2 written to partition 1, 260 sectors starting at 50 (abs 385610)
Determining the devices to be marked free.
Updating boot environment configuration database.
Updating boot environment description database on all BEs.
Updating all boot environment configuration databases.
Updating GRUB menu default setting
Boot environment deleted.
hypnotoad $ pfexec /usr/sbin/lustatus
Boot Environment Is Active Active Can Copy
Name Complete Now On Reboot Delete Status
------------- ---- --- ---- --- ---—
b69 yes yes yes no - (Obviously, don’t ‘ludelete’ until you’re happy the new build works well for you).
Now your original slice is freed up to use for b70.
Solaris Express on a laptop
The latest Ubuntu was a bit of a disappointment if I’m honest.
Luckily, the hard disk died horribly last month, so I took the hint and installed
Solaris Express on the replacement.
software
If you want a supported OS, look at Solaris ExpressDeveloper Edition (SXDE)
free download or order a DVD .
I just want shiny toys, so I’m happy with the Community Edition
(SXCE) – b68 was the latest build, so I took that (SXDE is really just SXCE b64a neatly packaged anyway).
hardware
It’s not much to look at, but it’ll do.
- Bog standard ASUS Centrino laptop
- 512Mb of RAM
- 1.4Ghz Speedstep CPU
- 40 Gb IDE disk
I use it because a) it’s nice and lightweight and b) it’s a work laptop, so it was free.
potential problems
First: that’s not a lot of RAM. The SXDE GUI install needs 768Mb to run.
That’s fine with me, I like text installs.
Post-install, I’ll avoid the JDS (GNOME) desktop in favour of CDE (until I can persuade wmii to build). Turning off unwanted services etc should
give me plenty of room.
Second: I’ve got a WPA WLAN.
At the time of writing, SXCE only does WPA on Atheros chipsets. I picked up a Netgear on ebay for a tenner.
Third: I’ll be dual-booting with Ubuntu (in case SXCE lacks something I can’t live without).
Ubuntu’s GRUB can chainload the Solaris loader, so that’s no problem. You just need an entry like:
title Solaris Express
root (hd0,1)
chainloader +1
makeactive
bootLastly: linux swap partitions have the same partition id as solaris partitions. To avoid confusing the installer, I’ve put the Solaris fdisk partition before your linux swap slice.
disk layout
My 4 fdisk partitions are:
- a 250Mb ext3 partition (/boot in Ubuntu, with a GRUB menu entry for Solaris)
- a 12Gb Solaris partition
- a 20Gb ZFS zpool
- an 8Gb extended partition for Ubuntu various filesystems
The zpool has its own fdisk partition (rather than living inside the Solaris partition).
I’ll be replacing Ubuntu with FreeBSD 7 (with ZFS support ) shortly, and this’ll make it a little easier to see the zpool.
For now, it’ll hold things like /export/home and other ‘user data’.
run the install
As I said, I don’t have enough RAM to choose the ‘Solaris Express Developer Edition’ menu
option, so I’ll install the compilers later -
it works out pretty well, since I can install them to my zpool and keep the size of my
root fs down.
I chose ‘Networked: no’ (see later) and then the ‘Everything’ cluster.
This says it needs a 5Gb root filesystem (it only uses 3Gb to install, so I’m guessing that includes
some room for growth).
Linux partitions are essentially DOS partitions (primary or logical).
Solaris (like BSD) takes a primary partition and subdivide it into ‘slices’ ( / , /var, /usr, swap etc. )
In my case, I chopped up my 12Gb to get:
- 600MB of swap (for crashdumps – it needs to be more than your system RAM)
- 5 1/2 Gb for a root filesystem
- 5 1/2 Gb for an alternate root (for Live Upgrade )
It’s a straightforward install – choose root password, timezone, etc. – mainly because I don’t have to
go through the pain of trying to customize my package list.
postinstall
There are a few things that still need doing, so after the reboot, login as root
(to CDE if you are short of RAM like me).
networkardium leviosa
I skipped the network setup because the NetWork Auto-Magic (NWAM) project handles all that.
Unfortunately, it will try to do use my internal card first, and since I don’t have a WEP
network (which is the ‘best’ ipw can do), it hangs and never gets to my (WPA-aware) Atheros card.
The simplest fix is just to pull out the driver and reboot.
- rem_drv ipw
- init 6
- #….after the reboot
- svcadm enable nwam
- # … tell it your passphrase
cool and the gang
Without some sort of CPU throttling, the laptop (and therefore your lap) gets too hot.
Speedstep is supported as of b70 , but as that hasn’t been released yet I installed powernow
using frkit , which seems to do the trick.
no diving, no bombing, no petting
Next, I make the ZFS zpool. Since I only have the one disk, I tell ZFS to make 2 copies of
all data by default to get at least some level of redundancy. Since this is done at the top-level
it will be ‘inherited’ by all child filesystems, so I have to remember to ‘set copies=1’ for non-essential
data or I will run out of space in short order.
zpool create tank c0d0p3
zfs set mountpoint=none tank
zfs set copies=2 tank
zfs create -o mountpoint=/export/home tank/homethe user-al suspects
I create a user account and home directory:
zfs create tank/home/dick
useradd -c 'Dick Davies' -d /export/home/dick -s /usr/bin/zsh dick
chown -R dick /export/home/dick
passwd dickI like to make myself a project, just so it’s easy to see my own processes
with ‘prstat -J’:
projadd -c "Dicks project" user.dickNext, I attach a rights profile to my user.
The ‘right way’ to use RBAC is to assign
a rights profile to a role and switch to that role when needed, but
since this is just a laptop, I’ll give my user the ‘all privileges’ profile directly.
The ‘users and accounts’ applet in JDS can do this, or you can just use usermod:
usermod -P 'Primary Administrator' dicknow I can run any privilege-aware commands (e.g. svcadm) with rootly powers.
For everything else, there’s ‘pfexec’ (effectively, passwordless sudo).
From now on, there’s no need to be root, so I logout and then log in as ‘dick’.
when in Rome
Last, I’ll install Suns compilers I would’ve got with the ‘Developer Edition’ menu option.
/opt itself is copied during a live upgrade – by putting them in a subdirectory, we’ll
avoid that step (I’ll upgrade the compilers myself).
for i in SUNWspro netbeans-5.5.1 SUNWappserver netbeans-5.5
do
pfexec zfs create tank/$i
pfexec zfs set mountpoint=/opt/$i tank/$i
pfexec zfs set copies=1 tank/$i
pfexec zfs set compression=on tank/$i
done
pfexec /cdrom/sol_11_x86/DeveloperTools/install_devtools.shAs of b68 there’s no need to add /usr/ccs/bin to your PATH. Sun wised up and put the tools where users might actually find them.
so far, so good
plus points
- despite a wart or two, NWAM is great; as simple as NetworkManager but as desktop-independant as a manual wpa_supplicant setup
- removable media Just Works much better than Linux (and again, doesn’t rely on a GUI)
- the bundled realplayer bits work with bbc.co.uk ‘listen again’ – that’s never happened with any other *NIX
- you get zfs and dtrace (which have already paid for themselves)
- most my software is here – gcc, svn, hg and zsh are in the base, irssi and mplayer are in blastwave .
downers
- dvorak support is a hack (xmodmap)
- lots of ZFS I/O can slow down the system a fair bit (probably because of the ‘copies=2’ thing).
- I haven’t got wmii to build yet (I’m making do with fluxbox, which is less RSI-friendly)