[desktop-discuss] Successful SXCE upgrade from DVD media on ZFS root

[Albert Lee]

Hi,

I converted my laptop to use ZFS root, loosely following the instructions: 
http://opensolaris.org/os/community/zfs/boot/zfsboot-manual/

In my case I added seperate filesystems under rootfs for /usr, /var, /opt, and 
/export, which slightly complicates things (they have to be added to vfstab and 
mounted for the upgrade).

Then I booted from a SXCE b73 DVD to upgrade from b72, using the text installer 
(ttinstall). ttinstall assumes you use UFS and has several checks that fail on 
ZFS. After wrangling with ttinstall for a while, I was able to coax it into 
upgrading my system to SXCE b73.



I've written a script to automate this process:

http://trisk.acm.jhu.edu/zfs_ttinstall

Place that script in a place you can access it from during the install (i.e. on 
your root pool or on a USB stick or another filesystem you can mount).

When booting from the DVD, choose "Solaris Express" at the grub prompt, and 
select one of the text-based install options when prompted later (Desktop is 
preferable, but Console should also work).

Set ROOTPOOL, ROOTFS, and ROOTDEV appropriately at the top of the script.
It assumes that if you have any filesystems under /, they are located at 
$ROOTPOOL/$ROOTFS/<filesystem> (e.g. /usr is rootpool/rootfs/usr). Those will 
be mounted automatically. It also assumes that ROOTDEV is the pool location and 
also where you want the grub boot sector installed.

Run the script, and hopefully, it will do the right thing. ;)

If you have any issues, please read the script.

Let me know if this was helpful,

-Albert