updating system

[Ron Irving]

I have a d370, running 10.20. I know, through my reading, that a cold install is preferable to an upgrade. My question, (the first of many, I'm sure,) is, as far as patches go, should I just install what came with the media pack, and let it run? Will that be sufficient?
I'm also planning on keeping my current volume structure. To do that, will /etc/fstab in 10.20 work with 11.0? Maybe dumb questions, but I thought to ask anyway, lest a large explosion of my HP server takes out a city block.

Ron Irving
rirving@mossergrp.com

[Ron Irving]

I forgot to mention that I also have an E55 with 10.01 at my disposal to beat apon. Test benches are good benches!!

[Patrick Wallek · Accepted solution]

Just keeping your /etc/fstab will not be sufficient to use your VGs once you install 11.0. That is one of the files that you need to make sure you have a tape backup of though.

The steps I would go through are this:

1) Backup all necessary files on the 10.20 system (fstab, passwd, group, hosts, dns files, sendmail files, resolv.conf, nsswitch.conf, other critical files)
2) Export your volumes groups and create map files so that you can re-import on the 11.0 machine (vgexport -pvim mapefilename /dev/vg??)
3) Take a full backup of your 10.20 machine, in case you need anything later. Also take a full Ignite/UX (make_tape_recovery) backup of VG00 so you can reinstall 10.20 if necessary.
4) Install 11.0
5) Restore files from tape to temporary location and move into place as necessary. Make sure you get the map files.
6) Import your VGs. (vgimport -vim mapefilename /dev/vg?? - make sure you create the /dev/vg?? directory and /dev/vg??/group file first)
7) Try to mount the VGs that you just imported and add entries to /etc/fstab.
8) Do other testing as necessary.

This is not intended to be a complete list, but should be a good guideline for you to start from.

Hope this helps.

[Bernie Vande Griend]

I would suggest going to 11.11 instead of 11.0 because there's been more improvements and will probably be around longer. I would also suggest downloading the latest patch bundle (June 2001) from HP for which ever OS version you choose. Depending on what's on the system you may need more patches, but this will go a long way.
If possible, I would suggest installing 11.* to a new drive so you can still get to your old boot drive if you need it, this has worked very well for us. I'm assuming you use LVM, so you will have to restore your LVM structures for your /etc/fstab to work. vgimport is your friend. I could go into more detail, but there's lot of information in the forum and elsewhere that talks about that.