Howto Upgrade Solaris x86 and Sparc with Live Upgrade and pca

pca is one of the best update utilities for Solaris. Live Upgrade ist the best and recommended way to make a failsave upgrade.

updates pca to the latest version

./pca --update=now

download all available patches (login/pass in pca.conf)

.pca -d

Live Upgrade

Live Upgrade is allmost identical between Sparc and x86, but x86 uses grub as bootloader where Sparc uses OpenBoot

You can always check the status with

lustatus
zfs list
lumount

If Live Upgrade is not active you will ativate it with the first creation of a boot environment (lucreate)

lucreate -n my20111004upd
lumount my20111004upd
./pca -i -R /.alt.20111004upd
luumount my20111004upd
luactivate my20111004upd

example .. x86 luactivate output .. example ..Sparc luactivate output ..

reboot with init 6

init 6

You can just reboot with init 6 and with a little luck you are in the new boot environment.

Manually choose a environment

x86

Uses the grub bootloader to select the boot environment

GNU GRUB version 0.95 (616K lower / 4127168K upper memory)
+-------------------------------------------------------------------+
|s10s_u10wos_17b                                                    |
|20140729upd                                                        |
|Solaris failsafe                                                   |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------+
Use the ^ and v keys to select which entry is highlighted. Press
enter to boot the selected OS, 'e' to edit the commands before
booting, or 'c' for a command-line.

Sparc

Uses the OpenBoot ROM

ok boot -L
...
Rebooting with command: boot -L                                       
Boot device: /pci@1c,600000/scsi@2/disk@0,0:a  File and args: -L
1 s10s_u10wos_17b
2 20121119upd
Select environment to boot: [ 1 - 2 ]: 

To boot the selected entry, invoke:
boot [<root-device>] -Z rpool/ROOT/20121119upd

Program terminated
ok boot -Z rpool/ROOT/20121119upd
....

Some other options

boot -F failsafe

ok boot -Z rpool/ROOT/zfsBE2 -F failsafe

http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19253-01/819-5461/ggrlv/index.html