Upgrading the OS

An OS upgrade merges the new version of the Solaris operating environment with the existing files on the system’s disk. An upgrade saves as many modifications as possible that you have made to the previous version of the Solaris operating environment.

You can upgrade any system that is running the Solaris 2.6, 7, or 8 software. You also can update the Solaris 9 Update release if your system is running an older version of the Solaris 9 software. In this chapter, I will be describing how to perform an initial installation and will not be performing an upgrade. You’ll see, however, in the later section “Using the Interactive Installation Process (suninstall): SPARC,” that after the system identification portion of the installation process is complete, suninstall will ask you if you want to perform an upgrade.

You cannot upgrade your system to a software group that is not installed on the system. For example, if you previously installed the end user Solaris software group on your system, you cannot use the upgrade option to upgrade to the developer Solaris Software group. However, during the upgrade, you can add software to the system that is not part of the currently installed software group.

If you are already running the Solaris 9 operating environment and have installed individual patches, be aware of the following when upgrading to a Solaris 9 Update release:

• Any patches that were supplied as part of the Solaris 9 Update release are reapplied to your system. You cannot back out these patches.

• Any patches that were previously installed on your system and are not included in the Solaris 9 Update release are removed.

The Patch Analyzer performs an analysis of your system to determine which patches, if any, will be removed by upgrading to the Solaris 9 Update release. The Patch Analyzer is available in the following formats:

• If you are using the Solaris Web Start program to upgrade, the Patch Analyzer dialog box appears. Select Yes to perform the analysis.

• If you are using the Solaris suninstall program to upgrade, select Analyze in the Patch Analysis dialog box to perform the analysis.

• If you are using a custom JumpStart installation or Solaris Live Upgrade to upgrade, run the analyze_patches script to perform the analysis. The analyze_patches script is described in Chapter 12, “Software Package Administration.”