Re: Live Upgrade for Linux

From: Eric Rostetter (eric.rostetter@physics.utexas.edu)
Date: 03/27/03

  • Next message: Steffen Dettmer: "Re: Live Upgrade for Linux" 
    Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2003 17:14:53 -0600
From: Eric Rostetter <eric.rostetter@physics.utexas.edu>
To: focus-linux@securityfocus.com

    Quoting Seth Arnold <sarnold@wirex.com>:

    > On Tue, Mar 25, 2003 at 02:20:27PM -0600, Kelly Sauke wrote:
    > > What Live Upgrade does under solaris is it creates a complete
    > > alternate boot environment with a root /usr /var and any other
    > > filesystem you want. Then you can apply patches etc to this other
    > > boot environment and boot off of that.
    >
    > Ahh! That's kindof a cool idea.

    Yes, it is.

    > When partitioning your hard drives, make duplicates of your "replicated"
    > filesystems, and ask /etc/fstab to mount them under /testing/ in their
    > normal ordering. Then, use either the packaging tool's --chroot option
    > (I expect that all tools can be asked to use a chroot environment) or
    > just use the chroot command to run them all within the little
    > environment.

    This isn't the same as Live Upgrade. With Live Upgrade, I can install a
    fresh OS while the machine is running, or upgrade (e.g. From Solaris 8
    to Solaris 9) while the system is running. In the linux world, at least
    the versions I've used, you can't do this (Install RedHat 8.0 on the
    machine while it is up and running RedHat 7.3, or upgrade 7.3 to 8.0
    while running). In other words, there are no vendor install/upgrade
    utilities that I know of for linux that run on a running system.

    I agree you can do updates (install security patches, etc) this way.
    But not a full install or major OS upgrade, AFAIK.

    The alternative I use, and it sucks, is:

    Software mirror the disks. Break the mirror. Move the drive to another
    machine which has the exact same hardware. Do the upgrade/install. Shut
    down the first machine. Swap the disks. Boot. Once it all works, is
    tested, etc. then resync the mirrors. If it fails, reboot off the old
    (not yet synced) disk.

    Problem is obvious: it requires another machine of the same type of hardware. 

    --
Eric Rostetter
The Department of Physics
The University of Texas at Austin
Why get even? Get odd!
  • Next message: Steffen Dettmer: "Re: Live Upgrade for Linux"

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