Thank-you, thank-you for an instant picture. Twenty-two replies
within hours, which enables me to meet my deadlines here. Great stuff.
The overwhelming response said to go straight from 4.1.1(B) to 4.1.3 because
its got more bugs fixed (its also got lots of bugs of its own tho' ...).
Various breeds of SUNOS can be run together without problems, except that
for NFS, servers must be running same version of NFS & lockd as clients,
or higher (see below). There is also a warning for
quota users on 4.1.3 to install a jumbo patch or risk
losing a filesystem or two (see below). Some other patches were suggested.
===================================================================
========= original question with summarised answers ================
===================================================================
I hope i have covered all salient points, apologies in advance
for any omissions or misunderstandings...
> We are upgrading from SUNOs 4.1.1(B) mainly for reasons of matching
> OS version 4.1.2 on another SUN.
> We do *not* want to move to solaris 2 (yet anyway).
A couple of users commented that solaris 2 was a thing to be avoided
at present - for reasons of bugs and a the lack of a supporting
software base.
> Q1. Are there any *real* disadvantages in sticking with 4.1.2
> rather than moving straight to 4.1.3?
Almost unanimous response was to go straight to 4.1.3 for reasons of
stability, speed and more bug fixes. 4.1.3 is required anyway
for new hardware like SS10s, MPs and such things as differential scsi.
Someone else thought 4.1.2 is a bit smaller.
> Q2. If so, can 4.1.1(B) be upgraded to 4.1.3 without going thru
> 4.1.2?
All but one said a firm YES. (I do not know if this respondents
case is somehow different but i'm going to give it a go anyway.)
All but one respondent said you can use sunupgrade to do the job, but
someone noted that the 4.1.3 upgrade changes so much that its nearly
a full install anyway.
> Q3. Are there any known problems with running 4.1.2 & 4.1.3 together?
> The machines are standalone but one acts as DNS, news server.
Lots of experiences of mixing versions (including 5.?) say there
are no problems. However NFS servers must ensure that NFS and lockd
versions are at least the same as that of the clients.
lockd patches 100075-09 or 100075-10 were suggested as was the NFS
jumbo patch. Several OW3 patches were suggested (see Birger's
reply below). And for 4.1.3 quota users, 100988-01 patch is highly
recommended to avoid filesystem trashing..
> Platform: sparc 2, sun4c
-- Rosi Punton, Systems Programmer | rosi@redgum.ucnv.edu.au UCNV, Bendigo, Victoria, Australia | R.Punton@ucnv.edu.au --------------------------------------------------------------------------======================================================================== ========= end original question with summarised answers ================= =================== See below for more details: =======================
Thanks heartily to the following people:
szh@zcon.com (Syed Zaeem Hosain) myk@artel.com (Mike Steadman) ebumfr@anah.ericsson.com (Mike Rembis 66520) davis@opus (Thomas J Davis) "Jim Davis" <jdavis@cs.arizona.edu> frankm@shadow.cna.tek.com (Frank 'Scruffy' Miller) dougj@iplab.health.ufl.edu (Doug Jones) Ike Stoddard <stoddard@draper.com> barnes@sde.mdso.vf.ge.com (Barnes William) poffen@sj.ate.slb.com (Russ Poffenberger) Mike Raffety <miker@il.us.swissbank.com> "Susan Thielen" <thielen@irus.rri.uwo.ca> Dave Mitchell <D.Mitchell@dcs.sheffield.ac.uk> morrow@cns.ucalgary.ca (Bill Morrow) rmcmahon@mdo.nofc.forestry.ca (Robert McMahon) bobr@houston.nam.SLB.COM ( Bob Reardon ) "Marty Leisner" <leisner@eso.mc.xerox.com> Birger.Wathne@vest.sdata.no (Birger A. Wathne) blymn@mulga.awadi.com.AU (Brett Lymn) sls@cs.duke.edu (Shelley L. Shostak) simon@uniq.com.au (Simon Woodhead - Uniq Professional Services) cc_gucky@rcvie.co.at (Retter d. Universums)
===== bits of replies that add something to the above summary === ---- ------------------------------------------------------------------- From: poffen@sj.ate.slb.com (Russ Poffenberger)
>Q1. Are there any *real* disadvantages in sticking with 4.1.2 > rather than moving straight to 4.1.3?
Other than more bug fixes and some speed improvements in 4.1.3, not much different.
>Q2. If so, can 4.1.1(B) be upgraded to 4.1.3 without going thru > 4.1.2?
Yes, I have used the sunupgrade script many times to upgrade a 4.1.1 system to 4.1.3.
>Q3. Are there any known problems with running 4.1.2 & 4.1.3 together? > The machines are standalone but one acts as DNS, news server. >
There should be no real problems. You may want to get the latest lockd patch (100075-09, or 100075-10) and install on all the machines.
-------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Birger.Wathne@vest.sdata.no (Birger A. Wathne)
It should be possible to upgrade directly from 4.1.1 to 4.1.3. 4.1.3 has a lot of bugfixes compared to 4.1.2. Especially for sun4m hosts (get the Sun4m supplement CD as well if you have a 6xx or SS10).
The only problem with running different OS's together is that servers NFS and lockd versions should always be at the same level as the clients (or higher).
Get the lates versions of the lockd and NFS jumbo patches, and you should be safe. Get the latest versions of the X/NeWS jumbo patch as well as the filemgr, binder and classing-engine jumbo patches for OW 3.0. Install the OW 3.0 patches on one server, and mount this OW installation from the server. It will save a lot of disk on the clients compared to installing it on local disk, as well as a lot of time during the upgrade.
-------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Dave Mitchell <D.Mitchell@dcs.sheffield.ac.uk>
>Q1. Are there any *real* disadvantages in sticking with 4.1.2 > rather than moving straight to 4.1.3?`
I believe only 4.1.3 has the "fast fsck" feature built-in
>Q3. Are there any known problems with running 4.1.2 & 4.1.3 together? > The machines are standalone but one acts as DNS, news server.
not that I know of . However, if you are going to use quotas and 4.1.3 together, get patch 100988-01, or you risk getting your filesystems trashed!
-------------------------------------------------------------------- From: szh@zcon.com (Syed Zaeem Hosain)
> We do *not* want to move to solaris 2 (yet anyway).
Probably a good decision! Many apps still are not running under Solaris 2 yet. :-)
> Q2. If so, can 4.1.1(B) be upgraded to 4.1.3 without going thru > 4.1.2?
Yes. No problems here. Just be sure to do the usual things like backups prior to the upgrade! I believe that the 4.1.3 upgrade will require just about everything in the partition to change (not sure of this 100%), so an upgrade is effectively an install.
-------------------------------------------------------------------- From: myk@artel.com (Mike Steadman)
> Q1. Are there any *real* disadvantages in sticking with 4.1.2 > rather than moving straight to 4.1.3?
One of the libraries changed from 4.1.2 to 4.1.3 so I can only debug 4.1.3 core dumps on a 4.1.3 machine, and my desktop machine runs 4.1.2. I know this is nitpicking but it means running dbxtool remotely.
> Q3. Are there any known problems with running 4.1.2 & 4.1.3 together? > The machines are standalone but one acts as DNS, news server.
None that I know of. We have a mix of 4.1.[1,2,3], running DNS and noone's had any problems yet.
------------------------------------------------------------------- From: ebumfr@anah.ericsson.com (Mike Rembis 66520)
My recommendation is ..... 4.1.2 has too many problems. Go right to 4.1.3. It's much more stable and has less problems.
------------------------------------------------------------------- From: "Jim Davis" <jdavis@cs.arizona.edu>
:Q1. Are there any *real* disadvantages in sticking with 4.1.2 : rather than moving straight to 4.1.3?
You need 4.1.3 if you want to run SS10s. Other than that, 4.1.3 just rolled in some bugfixes.
------------------------------------------------------------------- From: frankm@shadow.cna.tek.com (Frank 'Scruffy' Miller)
You can go to 4.1.3 and bypass 4.1.2. 4.1.3 has 5 pages of bug fixes ... seems important to upgrade.
I run a mix of 4.1.1 on the sun3's and 4.1.3 on the sparcs with no problem.
------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Ike Stoddard <stoddard@draper.com>
> Q2. If so, can 4.1.1(B) be upgraded to 4.1.3 without going thru > 4.1.2?
I did this exact thing, for my group's compute server, an SS2.
> Q3. Are there any known problems with running 4.1.2 & 4.1.3 together? > The machines are standalone but one acts as DNS, news server.
Just no point that I can see. Your mileage may vary. The other machine should be cajoled/encouraged/convinced to upgrade also.
----------------------------------------------------------------- *** this is the response which varies, for whatever reason *** From: barnes@sde.mdso.vf.ge.com (Barnes William)
1 - None that I know of, but the only way to tell is to look at the release notes and see what may effect you and the people you support.
2 - No, If you use SUNUPGRADE then you must go 4.1.1 -> 4.1.2 -> 4.1.3. By the way, if you have added/removed clients/software by hand without the add_servers, add_client, rm_client or other Sun scripts, then you may want to look at the /etc/install directory and make sure that EVERY file correctly describes your configuration.
3 - We are running 4.1.1, 4.1.2, 4.1.3, 5.1 and now 5.2 all on the same network with no problems related to the different os levels. (we want to be at 4.1.3/5.2 in the next few weeks so that by the end of summer we are just 5.2)
------------------------------------------------------------------- From: "Susan Thielen" <thielen@irus.rri.uwo.ca>
I am doing this myself... I am just going for broke, and doing a total install.. But luckily I will be leaving the original partitions untouched.. Until all problems are solved..
------------------------------------------------------------------- From: morrow@cns.ucalgary.ca (Bill Morrow) > > Q1. Are there any *real* disadvantages in sticking with 4.1.2 > rather than moving straight to 4.1.3?
Not that I've found. 4.1.2 may be a bit smaller.
> Q3. Are there any known problems with running 4.1.2 & 4.1.3 together? > The machines are standalone but one acts as DNS, news server. >
Not so far. My DNS/mailhost/gateway/NIS master is still at 4.1.1, most other machines are now at 4.1.3, a few still at 4.1.2 Please summarize if anyone does mention problems.
---------------------------------------------------------------- From: rmcmahon@mdo.nofc.forestry.ca (Robert McMahon)
We went from SunOS 4.1.1 Revision B and Open Windows 2.0 straight to SunOS 4.1.3 and Open Windows 3.0 on IPCs, IPXs, and a SS2. We did not have to use SunOS 4.1.2 at all.
----------------------------------------------------------------- From: bobr@houston.nam.SLB.COM ( Bob Reardon ) 1) The only reason we upgraded one server from 4.1.2 to 4.1.3 was to gain support for faster cpu (Viking) on 670MP. I don't know of any disadvantage in staying with 4.1.2 if you don't need that support. 2) Yes. The book says you can upgrade from any 4.1.x 3) We have run a network one bootserver at 4.1.3, one bootserver at 4.1.2 and Database/Fileserver at 4.1.2. The Fileserver was recently upgraded to 4.1.3. Have not experienced any problems with the mixed environment.
----------------------------------------------------------------- From: "Marty Leisner" <leisner@eso.mc.xerox.com>
You don't need 4.1.2...
4.1.3 is somewhat better than 4.1.2 (so what I understand). Solaris 2.1 is a nightmare.
----------------------------------------------------------------- From: simon@uniq.com.au (Simon Woodhead - Uniq Professional Services) > > Q1. Are there any *real* disadvantages in sticking with 4.1.2 > rather than moving straight to 4.1.3?
Not "*real*", but it doesn't make much sense if you are upgrading anyway. 4.1.3 has 200-300 bug fixes over 4.1.2...
> Q3. Are there any known problems with running 4.1.2 & 4.1.3 together? > The machines are standalone but one acts as DNS, news server.
No. The 4.1.2 machine may encounter problems that you won't see on 4.1.3 for the reasons above. Upgrading the 4.1.2 system to 4.1.3 is trivial - you don't need to do a full install. You can just run `sunupgrade` which will do it all for you (see the Release Notes). It takes about half an hour if you have a reasonably generic existing setup.
----------------------------------------------------------------- From: cc_gucky@rcvie.co.at (Retter d. Universums)
As far as I know 4.1.3 is 4.1.2+some Patches (may be you have already newer versions integrated to your 4.1.2 than 4.1.3 have) AND the other thing is drivers for SS10. I didn't want to go to 4.1.3 but got some SS10. So I loaded /usr/kvm from the 4.1.3 CD (because SS10 are sun4m, not sun4c) + got a generic kernel, bootet them over the net (all our clients boot from net with local swap), with /usr from 4.1.2 and /usr/kvm from 4.1.3 customized the kernel and now they are running without major problems (/usr 4.1.2, /usr/kvm 4.1.3).
Our 4.1.2 Suns are mixture of over 100 clients (1xSLC, SS1, SS1+, IPC, SS2) and some servers (1x 4/470, 1x 4/490, 1x 4/670(4), some IPCs with 1-4 disks).
======== end of summarised replies =============================
-- Rosi Punton, Systems Programmer | rosi@redgum.ucnv.edu.au UCNV, Bendigo, Victoria, Australia | R.Punton@ucnv.edu.au -------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Life is something to do when you can't go to sleep -- Fran Lebowitz
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