SUMMARY: SunOS 4.1.2 (Solaris 1.0.1) questions

From: Drew Montag (millidc!indigo!djm@uunet.UU.NET)
Date: Thu Apr 30 1992 - 20:45:33 CDT


Sun Managers,

Yesterday, I wrote:

> We're thinking of upgrading our SPARCstations from SunOS 4.1.1 to SunOS 4.1.2
> (Solaris 1.0.1), and I have a few questions:
>
> 1) Is it worth doing? What will it buy us?
>
> 2) Are there any new bugs in 4.1.2 to worry about?
>
> 3) Does the upgrade process itself go pretty smoothly?
>
> 4) Why have I gotten the impression that I need to (should?) reformat my
> disks for this? I've seen vague references to this in other messages,
> but I can't find anything in the release notes.

Thanks for the quick responses. Here's a summary of what I learned:

> 1) Is it worth doing?

         In general, everyone agrees that it's worth doing, although a couple of
         people said that it was more trouble than it was worth. One person passed
         on a RUMOR (note, just a RUMOR) that there were enough problems still in
         4.1.2 that Sun was going to delay 5.0 (Solaris 2.0) and release 4.1.3 first.
         If that turns out to be true, it might make sense to wait for 4.1.3 instead
         of installing 4.1.2.

> 1) What will it buy us?

         The main things that people mentioned were:

            - Lots of patches and bug fixes (about 300 of them).
            - Quicker reboots, due to a faster and smarter "fsck" algorithm.
            - Support for MP systems (doesn't apply to us).
            - An updated "/etc/format.dat" file.

> 2) Are there any new bugs in 4.1.2 to worry about?

         There are some leftover bugs from 4.1.1 (and before) that were not fixed in
         4.1.2, and there are new patches for these. In addition, people said that
         they had problems with the following:

            - New "sendmail".
            - Asynch I/O.
            - Multiprocessor systems ("mmap").
            - GS and GT graphics performance.
            - OpenWindows 3.0/textedit core dumps (not a 4.1.2 problem, per se).
            - OpenWindows 3.0/NeWSprint 2.0 don't mix.
            - A few security holes.

> 3) Does the upgrade process itself go pretty smoothly?

         This one got a resounding "YES"! Almost everyone has been very impressed
         with the "sunupgrade" program. Typical upgrade times seem to be about 40
         to 45 minutes, which is great. A couple of people reminded me that the
         "sunupgrade" program only works if you are upgrading from 4.1.1. Otherwise
         you need to do a full install.

> 4) Why have I gotten the impression that I need to (should?) reformat my
> disks for this? I've seen vague references to this in other messages,
> but I can't find anything in the release notes.

         This was the crucial question. As it turns out, you do *NOT* need to
         reformat a disk when you upgrade from 4.1.1 to 4.1.2. I got a message
         from Celeste Stokely (celeste@stokely.mtview.ca.us), who says that she is
         the person who started this rumor, that it is completely false, and that
         she knows of several systems that have done this successfully. Everyone
         else agreed with her.

Thanks to the following people for their responses:

   Bill Shorter bill@aloft.att.com
   Brent Alan Wiese brent@crick.ssctr.bcm.tmc.edu
   Don Baune don@doug.med.utah.edu
   Charles H. Buchholtz chip@midnight.seas.upenn.edu
   Birger Wathne birger@vest.sdata.no
   Larry Chin larry@cchtor
   John Lees lees@cps.msu.edu
   Dave Yearke yearke@calspan.com
   Celeste Stokely celeste@stokely.mtview.ca.us
   Kevin McElearney kevinmac@ll.mit.edu
   Terry Rosenbaum tlr@toy.rad.msu.edu
   Hal Stern stern@sunne.East.Sun.COM
   Jonathan Corbet corbet@stout.atd.ucar.edu
   Brian H. Powell brian@natinst.com
   Phil Blanchfield phil@dgbt.doc.ca
   Marc Phillips phillips@athena.Qualcomm.COM
   J. Matt Landrum mdl@cypress.com
   Bill Bathurst bathurst@noaapmel.gov
   Jim Wills jwills@deltam.com

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