How to Upgrade from OpenSolaris 2008.05 to Later Versions in VirtualBox

This procedure defines the steps to upgrade OpenSolaris running in VirtualBox from the 2008.05 release to a later version of OpenSolaris. This upgrade is special because there are some image packaging system upgrades you have to do to successfully upgrade the entire system.

One really neat feature of OpenSolaris upgrade is that the image-update command (the one that actually downloads and installs all of the new software) does so in a clone of the existing environment. That means it does not overwrite the existing system, so you can always run the original system if anything goes wrong with the upgrade.

Note
The process may be the same or similar if upgrading OpenSolaris that is installed directly on the hardware. I'm just documenting what I did that worked for 2008.05 to 2008.11 in VirtualBox.

Before You Begin

To complete this procedure, you need:

Network connectivity to an OpenSolaris package repository. (The pkg commands below will fail if you don't have this.)

Steps

Start VirtualBox and start OpenSolaris 2008.05.
In OpenSolaris 2008.05, open a terminal window. Do the next set of commands in the terminal window.
Note
In the following steps, the $ indicates the terminal prompt. You do not need to enter those when typing the commands.

Enter the following 3 commands to make sure you are using the latest version of the Package Manager software:

$ BUILD=`uname -v | sed -e "s/snv_//" -e "s/[a-z]//"`
$ pfexec pkg refresh
$ pfexec pkg install SUNWipkg@0.5.11-0.${BUILD}

You should see output similar to the following:

                                    DOWNLOAD                                    PKGS       FILES     XFER (MB)
Completed                                    1/1     156/156     0.55/0.55

PHASE                                        ACTIONS
Removal Phase                                  11/11
Install Phase                                  28/28
Update Phase                                 155/155
PHASE                                          ITEMS
Reading Existing Index                           8/8
Indexing Packages                                1/1

Next, run the install entire command.

$ pfexec pkg install entire@0.5.11-0.${BUILD}
No updates available for this image.

Use the following pkg install command to install the new software you need prior to upgrading to OpenSolaris 2008.11.

$ pfexec pkg install SUNWinstall-libs

You should see output similar to the following:

                                    
Refreshing Catalog 1/1 opensolaris.org
PHASE                                          ITEMS
Indexing Packages                            531/531
DOWNLOAD                                    PKGS       FILES     XFER (MB)
Completed                                    1/1         4/4     0.07/0.07

PHASE                                        ACTIONS
Removal Phase                                    6/6
Install Phase                                    5/5
Update Phase                                     4/4
Reading Existing Index                           9/9
Indexing Packages                                1/1

Now, use the following command to install the new 2008.11 software from the OpenSolaris package repository.

$ pfexec pkg image-update

You should see output similar to the following:

DOWNLOAD                                    PKGS       FILES     XFER (MB)
Completed                                607/607 52955/52955 785.27/785.27

PHASE                                        ACTIONS
Removal Phase                            20818/20818
Install Phase                            31977/31977
Update Phase                             67006/67006
PHASE                                          ITEMS
Reading Existing Index                           9/9
Indexing Packages                            607/607
stage1 written to partition 0 sector 0 (abs 16065)
stage2 written to partition 0, 267 sectors starting at 50 (abs 16115)

A clone of opensolaris exists and has been updated and activated.
On the next boot the Boot Environment *opensolaris-1* will be mounted on '/'.
Reboot when ready to switch to this updated BE.

This completes the upgrade procedure. The next time you start OpenSolaris in VirutalBox, you will see the Boot Environment window with a list of systems you can boot.

The newly upgrade boot environment is named opensolaris-1 and should be set to boot by default. If you have any problems with opensolaris-1, you can select the previous boot environment from the list.

How to Upgrade from OpenSolaris 2008.05 to Later Versions in VirtualBox