HPUX Upgrade

[Jim Mallett]

I'm moving from 11.00 to 11.11 on one of my L2000 servers. I have an extra 18G internal disk so I'm going to install to that, switch my primary boot path, and save the original internal for a fallback.
The rest of my disk is in an EMC frame.
Once I have the 11.11 OS installed do I need to rebuild my VGs and restore the data from a backup or could I use something like VGCFGRESTORE? My thought being that the data is still technically on the EMC disk. I'd prefer to import those disks rather than have to restore them.

Also, anything else I should keep my guard up for during this?

Thanks in advance....

Jim Mallett

[Jeff Schussele]

Hi Jim,

No, you shouldn't have the vgcfgrestore them. You should just vgexport them with -s rcp/ftp these files to a safe place & then bring them back & vgimport them when the new OS is up & running.
There is the possibility that depending on what vxfs version you're currently, you may have/want to upgrade them post-import.

As to gotchas, I'd recommend 2 make_tape_recovery tapes & printing & archiving important config files to another system to be used again on the new OS or at least to help set the new OS up quicker.

The more time spent designing your work-plan will pay off by shortening the actual execution time.

Good Luck,
Jeff

[Pete Randall]

Jim,

You can use vgimport to reclaim your EMC data. Before the upgrade, save the output of vgexport -p -s -m /tmp/vg??map /dev/vg??. Once you're done with the install, run the following:

mkdir /dev/vg??
mknod /dev/vg??group c64 0x??0000
vgimport -s -m /tmp/vg??map /dev/vg??
vgchange -a y /dev/vg??

That's all there is to it.

Pete

(I'll try this again since my network decided to take a vacation just when I hit submit last time)

[John Poff]

Hi Jim,

We did just what you are describing when we upgraded an N4000 box from 11.00 to 11.11 a couple of months ago. As the others have mentioned, the vgexport/vgimport will get your VGs back in no time.

The only thing I remember us having problems with was getting the printer queues put back in place. We had a bunch of printers on the box and our guys were playing with saving the printer configuration in SAM and restoring it on the new box. The other problems were just little pieces of software that get installed somewhere and forgotten, until you upgrade. We found them and survived the upgrade without a lot of headaches.

Have fun!

JP

[Manju Kampli]

all the above replies are correct .. there is other method of upgrade you can use to avoid importing VGs and installing many other admins tools and s/ws

take a image of current 11.00 using ignite and restore it on your spare disk and do the normal 11.00 to 11i upgrade (which is straight forward) and your system is back to 11i with you you needing to anything later.

ofcourse you need to install the 11i patch bundles and products where required.

Hope this helps
Manju

[Ravi_8]

Hi, Jim

Since you are installing OS in sepearte disk. there is no need to rebuild the VG's. I have the strongs feelings that once the OS (11i) installation is over you can vgimport the lvol's from rest of the disks

[Steven E. Protter]

Just because you can import the lvols' which I agree you can do, doesn't mean you will suddenly have a working system.

Lots of sofware will need to be reinstalled.

Oracle might work but will make you nuts with errors. You might not be able to relink it, and will have to go through a painful, unsupported process to convert the database software and elements of the data.

P

[Jim Mallett]

Thanks for the responses. I'm definitely going to work up a plan on this one. This is a good start though.

[Martin Johnson]

Since you are changing the primary boot disk, please make sure you have the latest LVM patches installed. Otherwise, you system may become upbootable.

This problem happened to me during a 10.20 to 11.00 upgrade. I had the latest patches install, but when I installed mirroring for 11.0, it silently reinstalled LVM - an unpatched version, which rendered my system unbootable. If you install mirroring as part of the upgrade, make sure you reinstall the LVM patches!

HTH
Marty