[rescue] Re: Upgrade Solaris8 from MicroSPARC to UltraSPARC

[Chris Powell]

On Wed, 17 Oct 2001 08:20:24 -0400, Michael Thompson wrote:

> I need to upgrade the CPU a VME based WWW server next month. It currently
> has a 110 MHz MicroSPARC CPU and will get a 440 MHz UltraSPARC CPU.
> 
> Can I upgrade Solaris without doing a complete reinstall?

I moved a Solaris 7 system disk from an IPC (sun4c) to SS10 (sun4m) last
year. These are the steps I used (after help from several list members):

1. BACK THE DRIVE UP!
2. Boot from CD. Mount the root partition of the drive on /a and install
    the /platform/sun4m and /usr/platform/sun4m hierarchies and machine
    type (SUNW,....) links. Use 'installboot' to install the boot block.
3. Remove everything under /a/dev and /a/devices.
4. Tar /dev and /devices (i.e. the devices directories of your CD booted
    system). Untar them in /a/dev and /a/devices.
5. Remove /a/etc/path_to_inst
6. Halt the system, and reboot with -ravs (rebuild, ask, verbose,
    single-user) kernel flags. Hit return for everything EXCEPT when it
    asks to recreate /etc/path_to_inst (answer y).

You'll need to install the sun4u stuff instead of sun4m. There are
probably better ways of doing this, but it did work for me. YMMV.


Chris.