Description

Solaris Boot Environments

Veritas strongly encourages customers to use the Solaris beadm utility to create and manage Alternate Boot Environments (ABEs).

A system can have only one active boot environment, which is the booted environment.

Alternate Boot Environments (BE) can be created to manage updates made to a system. ABEs are inactive environments that are not currently booted. A system can have many inactive boot environments (ABEs).

You can activate an ABE at any time. This requires the user to activate the ABE and reboot the system to boot from that specific ABE environment, this then becomes the active BE once booted.

1.] List existing BE and ABEs

# beadm list
BE Name            Flags Mountpoint Space   Policy Created
------------------ ----- ---------- ------- ------ ----------------
solaris-1          -     -          2.65G   static 2020-06-03 05:16
solaris-1-backup-1 NR    /          221.11M static 2020-06-05 08:51
 

2.] Create new Alternate Boot Environment (ABE) named BE1
 

# beadm create BE1

# beadm list
BE Name            Flags Mountpoint Space   Policy Created
------------------ ----- ---------- ------- ------ ----------------
BE1                -     -          10.25G  static 2020-06-25 10:33
solaris-1          -     -          2.65G   static 2020-06-03 05:16
solaris-1-backup-1 NR    /          221.11M static 2020-06-05 08:51


3.] The Alternate Boot Environment (ABE) named BE1 can be mounted on a mount-point as follows:
 

# mkdir /BE

# beadm mount BE1 /BE

# beadm list
BE Name            Flags Mountpoint Space   Policy Created
------------------ ----- ---------- ------- ------ ----------------
BE1                -     /BE        10.25G  static 2020-06-25 10:33
solaris-1          -     -          2.65G   static 2020-06-03 05:16
solaris-1-backup-1 NR    /          221.11M static 2020-06-05 08:51

In this instance, the ABE is mounted on /BE.

The pkg information installed in the Alternate Boot Environment can be checked using the following -R argument with the pkginfo command:
 

# pkginfo -R /BE -l VRTSvxvm
   PKGINST:  VRTSvxvm
      NAME:  Binaries for VERITAS Volume Manager
  CATEGORY:  system
      ARCH:  sparc
   VERSION:  7.2.0.405,REV=07.31.2019.19.26
   BASEDIR:  /
    VENDOR:  Veritas Technologies LLC
      DESC:  Virtual Disk Subsystem
  INSTDATE:  Jun 05 2020 08:51
   HOTLINE:  https://www.veritas.com/content/support/en_US/contact-us.html
    STATUS:  completely installed

4.] The ABE "BE1" can unmounted and activated as shown below:

# beadm unmount [-f] BE 1
 

# beadm activate BE1

 

# beadm list
BE Name            Flags Mountpoint Space   Policy Created
------------------ ----- ---------- ------- ------ ----------------
BE1                R     -          10.25G  static 2020-06-25 10:33
solaris-1          -     -          2.65G   static 2020-06-03 05:16
solaris-1-backup-1 N     /          221.11M static 2020-06-05 08:51

The beadm flags are as follows:

FLAG        DESCRIPTION

R              Active on Reboot
N              Active Now
NR            Active Now and Active on Reboot
-               Inactive
!               Unbootable BE


Once the system is restarted it will then boot from the newly activated Alternate Boot Environment (ABE).

# reboot

5.] Once the system has restarted, confirm the new BE environment is shown as "BE1":

# beadm list
BE Name            Flags Mountpoint Space   Policy Created
------------------ ----- ---------- ------- ------ ----------------
BE1                NR    /          10.25G  static 2020-06-25 10:33
solaris-1          -     -          2.65G   static 2020-06-03 05:16
solaris-1-backup-1 -     -          221.11M static 2020-06-05 08:51

To revert back to an Alternate Boot Environment (ABE), simply activate that ABE:
 

# beadm activate

Common Product Installer
 

The Common Product Installer (CPI) for InfoScale products is capatible with Alternate Boot Environments (ABE).
 

The following syntax can be used to update an ABE using the mount-point for the ABE:
 

# beadm mount      /

# ./installer -rootpath  /