[caiman-discuss] Snap Upgrade: BE management straw man

[Ethan Quach]

As part of the Snap Upgrade project, we'll be implementing a new BE
management utility.  The following is a straw man proposal of what some
of the requirements are.


The BE management utility is aimed at replacing the functionality used
today in Live Upgrade.  The two main reasons for proposing such a
utility is to provide ZFS based BE support integrated with the new
packaging system, and to have an open sourced utility for managing BEs.


Proposed Requirements

	- ZFS support.

	- Simpler user interface.

	- Remove dependency on pfinstall and other miniroot utilities
	running on pre-upgraded environment.  The new BE management
	utility will use the new packaging tools to update the BE.
	This has the requirement that the new packaging tools be
	runnable on the older releases we're supporting upgrade from.

	- Simplify usage procedure by eliminating infodoc 72099.
	The download and installation of latest BE utilities and
	their requirements will be automatic by the usage of the
 	tools themselves.

	- Provide a lower level interface for applications like the
	Solaris installer and the packaging tools to access, create,
	destroy, and manipulate BEs.

	- BE configuration will be exportable so that BE metadata
	can be accessed and manipulated offline.

	- Provide, at minimum, the basic set of functionality
	provided by the Live Upgrade utility - create, delete,
	display, mount, and update a BE.

	- Provide minimal support for S10 UFS based BEs.  This
	minimal support should provide just enough functionality
	for migration off of UFS based BEs - deleting, activating,
	and possibly displaying the BE details.



Transitioning from LU to new BE management utility

	The Live Upgrade utility and the new BE management utility
	will initially coexist, however, will not be inter-operable.

	As long as the new BE management utility isn't used, the LU
	utility will continue to work as it does today.  The LU
	utility goes away in the Nevada time frame.

	The first use of the new BE management utility to create a BE
	will detect whether LU is currently being used, and if so,
	will notify the user.  Existing LU BE metadata will be imported
	into the new BE management utility.  With the new BE management
	utility, existing BEs (except the currently running one) can
	only be mounted or deleted, they won't be able to be activated
	or upgraded.

	All LU metadata will then be decommissioned to thwart further
	usage of LU.  'lucreate' will be updated to detect if the new
	BE management utility is being used, and if so, disallow
	creation of an LU BE.

	The new BE management utility will only create and upgrade
	ZFS based BEs.  Once a new ZFS based BE is booted, the only UFS
	based BE that can be activated is that one UFS based BE that was
	previously active (for fallback purposes).  All other UFS based
	BEs, whose configuration was imported during this transition, can
	only be mounted or deleted.
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