Solaris 10 10/08 (u6) is due to be released within the next month of so (I don’t have an exact date) and one of the great features to come with it is ZFS boot. You can already use ZFS boot on Nevada and OpenSolaris defaults to ZFS, but this will be the first release of officially supported Solaris 10 to have ZFS boot.
People have been waiting for this for a long time, and will naturally be eager to migrate their root filesystem from UFS to ZFS. This article will detail how you can do this using Live Upgrade. This will allow you to perform the migration with the least amount of downtime, and still have a safety net in case something goes wrong.
These instructions are aimed at users with systems ALREADY running Solaris 10 10/08 (update 6) or Nevada build 90 (snv_90) or later.
Create the Root zpool
The first thing you need to do is create your disk zpool. It MUST exist before you can continue, so create and verify it:
# zpool create rootpool c1t0d0s0 # zpool list NAME SIZE USED AVAIL CAP HEALTH ALTROOT rootpool 10G 73.5K 10.0G 0% ONLINE - #
If the slice you’ve selected currently has another filesystem on it, eg UFS or VxFS, you’ll need to use the -f flag to force the creation of the ZFS filesystem.
You can use any name you like. I’ve chosen rootpool to make it clear what the pool’s function is.
Create The Boot Environments (BE)
Now we’ve got our zpool in place, we can create the BEs that will be used to migrate the current root filesystem across to the new ZFS filesystem.
Create the ABE as follows:
This command will create two boot environments where:
ufsBEis the name your current boot environment will be assigned. This can be anything you like and is your safety net. If something goes wrong, you can always boot back to this BE (unless you delete it).zfsBEis the name of your new boot environment that will be on ZFS and…rootpoolis the name of the zpool you create for the boot environment.
This command will take a while to run as it copies your ufsBE to your new zfsBE and will produce output similar to the following if all goes well:
Analyzing system configuration.
No name for current boot environment.
Current boot environment is named
Creating initial configuration for primary boot environment
The device is not a root device for any boot environment; cannot get BE ID.
PBE configuration successful: PBE name
Comparing source boot environment
system(s) you specified for the new boot environment. Determining which
file systems should be in the new boot environment.
Updating boot environment description database on all BEs.
Updating system configuration files.
The device is not a root device for any boot environment; cannot get BE ID.
Creating configuration for boot environment
Source boot environment is
Creating boot environment
Creating file systems on boot environment
Creating
Populating file systems on boot environment
Checking selection integrity.
Integrity check OK.
Populating contents of mount point .
Copying.
Creating shared file system mount points.
Creating compare databases for boot environment
Creating compare database for file system .
Updating compare databases on boot environment
Making boot environment
Creating boot_archive for /.alt.tmp.b-7Tc.mnt
updating /.alt.tmp.b-7Tc.mnt/platform/sun4u/boot_archive
Population of boot environment
Creation of boot environment
#
The x86 output it not much different. It’ll just include information about updating GRUB.
Update: You may get the following error from lucreate:
ERROR: ZFS pool does not support boot environments.
This will be due to the label on the disk.
You need to relabel your root disks and give them an SMI label. You can do this using “format -e”, select the disk, then go to “label” and select “[0] SMI label”. This should be all that’s needed, but whilst you’re at it, you may as well check your partition table is still as you want. If not, make your changes and label the disk again.
For x86 system, you need to ensure your disk has an fdisk table.
You should now be able to perform the lucreate.
The most likely reason for your disk having an EFI label is it’s probably been used by ZFS as a whole disk before. ZFS uses EFI labels for whole disk usage, however you need an SMI label for your root disks at the moment (I believe this may change in the future).
Once the the lucreate has completed, you can verify your Live Upgrade environments with lustatus:
# lustatus Boot Environment Is Active Active Can Copy Name Complete Now On Reboot Delete Status -------------------------- -------- ------ --------- ------ ---------- ufsBE yes yes yes no - zfsBE yes no no yes - #
Activate and Boot from ZFS zpool
We’re almost done. All we need to do now is activate our new ZFS boot environment and reboot:
# init 6
NOTE: Ensure you reboot using “init 6” or “shutdown -i6“. Do NOT use “reboot”
Remember, if you’re on SPARC, you’ll need to set the appropriate boot device at the OBP. luactivate will remind you.
You can verify you’re booted from the ZFS BE using lustatus:
# lustatus Boot Environment Is Active Active Can Copy Name Complete Now On Reboot Delete Status -------------------------- -------- ------ --------- ------ ---------- ufsBE yes no no yes - zfsBE yes yes yes no - #
At this point you can delete the old ufsBE if all went well. You can also re-use that old disk/slice for anything you want like adding it to the rootpool to create a mirror. The choice is yours, but now you have your system booted from ZFS and all it’s wonderfulness is available on the root filesystem too.
Search
Recommended Book
Related Entries
- Solaris 10 10/08 (aka Update 6) is Now Available
- Growing a ZFS Root Pool
- HOWTO: Correct Permissions of a Covered Mount Point Without Remounting
- ZFS 2GB Swap
- OpenSolaris snv_90 Update Pain Free
- Links for 3 August 2007
- HOWTO: Disable NFSv4 on RedHat Enterprise Linux 4
- Links for 1 Jul 2008 - 30 Jul 2008
- Links for 27 Nov 2007 - 11 Jan 2008
- HOWTO: Create a ZFS Filesystem OS X Leopard
Buy Me A Beer
Wow - that’s really easy!
I have VMware Fusion installed on a client’s computer, and we performed a standard upgrade using a UFS filesystem which worked flawlessly. But then we had problems with booting ZFS, here is what occurred:
1) The lucreate command was used to migrate the UFS partition over to ZFS (worked absent any error messages)
2) The luactivate command was used to activate the new ZFS based partition (worked absent any error messages)
3) We used the “init 6″ command (NOT “reboot”) to restart the system (worked absent any error messages)
4) We then logged in up successful boot up only to find that an “lustatus” command revealed we had actually booted from the UFS partition, and not the ZFS partition.
What went wrong?
Hi Joe.
Sounds like you may not have selected the correct boot device. You didn’t state if you were on SPARC or x86. If SPARC, you will need to update your OBP boot device to point to the new partition. If x86, GRUB should have been updated, so you should only need to select it from the menu (I can’t remember if it’s changed to the default entry or not).
HTH
Colin
how can I do this if I have the folowing disc structure?
/dev/dsk/c1t0d0s0 20G 17G 3.2G 84% /
/dev/dsk/c1t0d0s6 20G 16G 3.5G 82% /usr
/dev/dsk/c1t0d0s5 20G 14G 5.7G 71% /var
can I assign whole disk c1t1d0 to rootpool?
or do I need to setup 3 separate pools for this?
zpool create rootpool c1t1d0 ?
Chris: Unfortunately, you MUST use slices for the root pool due to a limitation with ZFS boot. Accordingly, you’ll need to ensure you have an SMI label on your disk (default unless it’s been used by a non-root ZFS pool before) and partition it. If you want to assign all of the space to slice 0, then you can. There’s no point slicing the disk for /usr and /var or creating separate pools as these filesystems will be migrated into the root pool (I don’t think you can change this).
You can then create your rootpool using “zpool create rootpool c1t1d0s0″ and then perform your migration across to this device.
I attempted to move from ufs to zfs and all I got was a grub> prompt; see link, for which I’ve received no response, so far.
http://www.opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?threadID=82101&tstart=0
Have you any thoughts?
Thanks for your time.
Sounds like you may have some how trashed your GRUB config or GRUB can’t find your menu.lst for some reason.
I’ve posted a suggestion on the forum thread.
hi,
I am not able to do lucreate command while upgrade into to ZFS.
i have 4 disks in my sparc machine 2 disks are used for ufs solaris 10.and i m try to build zfs now.
i have created zpool with rest of 2 disks but lucreate command is throughing some error.
ERROR: ZFS pool does not support boot environments.
can you please help on this.
Veera.
Hi Veera
This is actually quite simple to solve - relabel your disks with “SMI Label”. You can do this by running…
# format -e ⇒ select the disk ⇒ label ⇒ [0] SMI label.Then check your partition layout is as desired and label the disk again.
This is actually cropping up quite a bit now, so I’ve updated the instructions above to include this step.
Hi colin,
I got the solution,any ways i have installed total OS with ZFS and i am successfully created solaris 9 os under zones.
Thanks for the help,
Veera.
Colin,
This is what happened when I tried it:
# zpool list
NAME SIZE USED AVAIL CAP HEALTH ALTROOT
rootpool 120G 111K 120G 0% ONLINE -
# lucreate -c c0t0d0 -n zfsbe -p rootpool
ERROR: unknown option — p
Usage: lucreate -n BE_name [ -A BE_description ] [ -c BE_name ]
[ -C ( boot_device | - ) ] [ -f exclude_list-file [ -f ... ] ] [ -I ]
[ -l error_log-file ] [ -M slice_list-file [ -M ... ] ]
[ -m mountPoint:devicePath:fsOptions [ -m ... ] ] [ -o out_file ]
[ -s ( - | source_BE_name ) ] [ -x exclude_dir/file [ -x ... ] ] [ -X ]
[ -y include_dir/file [ -y ... ] ] [ -Y include_list-file [ -Y ... ] ]
[ -z filter_list-file ]
# uname -a
SunOS wapofindb02 5.10 Generic_137137-09 sun4u sparc SUNW,Sun-Fire-V490
Any ideas on why I cant use the -p flag? Its not listed as an option on the man page either…
Thanks!!
Amit: Sounds like you’re either still running an earlier release of Solaris 10 (see /etc/release) or you’ve still got an old revision of the Live Upgrade pkgs installed.
Remove all the Live Upgrade pkgs and re-install from the Solaris 10 10/08 media and try again.
HI
Te doc was good and i was able to migrate UFS to ZFS with live upgrade with sum hiccups due to patches .. but i have one moe non root file system /zones on my root disk is it possible to convert it to zfs with live upgrade in root pool
I read somwhere it cannot do that .. is that correct and if yes how can we move other non root file systems from rootpool
Yes, I believe that is correct. However you can easily move your zone onto ZFS by creating the ZFS pool/filesystem and then use
zoneadm -z move to move your zone.Question for you guys. When my server is built via jumpstart the file system is laid down on the 0 disk with the following format. I’m wondering how I’d go about putting ZFS rootpool on this disk and mirroring it to the c0t1d0 disk. Anyone have any ideas?
Part Tag Cylinders
0 root 0-1611
1 swap 1611-3220
2 backup 0-14086
3 unassigned 0
4 unassigned 0
5 var 3221-5635
6 usr 5636-8050
7 home 8056-14086
Fred: If your system is still to be built, your best option is to change your jumpstart configuration and configure the rootpool mirror directly in the jumpstart profile (see the Installation Guide on docs.sun.com).
If your system is already built, convert your current UFS root disk to ZFS on the other disk and then attach this disk as a mirror (it’s the default for “zpool attach”).
If you need any more specific details or assistance, try the ZFS:Discuss forum/alias
What do you folks make of this error I get after jumpstarting the M3000? A copy of the profile is below as well. Any help is appreciated. Thanks.
[Ed. Removed superfluous info ]
Fred: you latest comment isn’t really related to this post. Please pose your question to your nearest Sun support centre, or try the OpenSolaris forums.
Thanks for the help. The EFI label was snagging me.