How to Flash-Update OBP 3.x on Solaris 10 ZFS rpool

Hi,

I just spent 2 days trying to do this and since extensive googlin
found no results about this, I am putting this one out there.

I have an old Ultra-60 that had OBP 3.23. I wanted to try out th
newest Solaris 10 u9 drop and figured I should get the OBP up to th
latest one for my Ultra-60. I had found the proper patch but the ol
method of OBP flashing required putting the boot file onto the
partition and booting that from the {} ok prompt.

My machine didn't have UFS but rather ZFS since I decided to instal
the Solaris 10 with ZFS root mirrors to try it out.

Stashing the file on the / filesystem did nothing since OBP needs t
boot ZFS using the new -Z param. And a plain old boot command won't se
anything in the ZFS rpool.

The only solution I finally discovered is to put the flash imag
("flash-update-Ultra60-latest", in my case) into the same directory a
the failsafe image. Then I can use a boot -F <image> command and ge
the OBP flash-update rather than the real failsafe.

Found the location of all failsafe files, picked my architectur
(sun4u)

bash-3.00# find / -name failsafe
/platform/sun4v/failsafe
/platform/sun4us/failsafe
/platform/sun4u/failsafe

... and copied the file according to the OBP readme instructions.

bash-3.00# cp /flash-update-Ultra60-latest /platform/sun4u/
bash-3.00# chmod 755 /flash-update*

then halted and booted the OBP bootfile

{2} ok boot -F flash-update-Ultra60-latest

Worked like a charm.

Hope that helps someone like me who is still using older hardware bu
the latest Solaris and ZFS.

Cheer

On Tue, 2011-02-22 at 21:04 -0600, smurphy wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I just spent 2 days trying to do this and since extensive googling
> found no results about this, I am putting this one out there.

You can also netboot the flash image. Worked for me with my Ultra 60.
--
Tactical Nuclear Kittens

smurphy ha scritto:

[...]

> Worked like a charm.
>
> Hope that helps someone like me who is still using older hardware but
> the latest Solaris and ZFS.

Thank you for sharing these tips.


Bye,


--
Alessandro Selli, http://alessandro.route-add.net
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WARNING: messages sent to "trappola" will never reach me.
Chiave PGP/GPG: EC885A8B

Freedom on the Oceans;1275173 Wrote:
> On Tue, 2011-02-22 at 21:04 -0600, smurphy wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I just spent 2 days trying to do this and since extensive googling
> > found no results about this, I am putting this one out there.
>
> You can also netboot the flash image. Worked for me with my Ultra 60.
> --
> Tactical Nuclear Kittens

Yeah, unfortunately, this is the only Unix box I had in my hobby lab.
And I couldn't believe that there could be such a problem doing it fro
the same box the way we used to under UFS. Rather than reinstall th
disks as UFS or try to make a UFS slice under ZFS, or try to setup
Windows netboot, or VM a Solaris install, I figured there had to be a
easier way from an existing standalone Solaris config.

But, for sure, a netboot would have been easier

On 2011-02-23, smurphy <> wrote:
>
> Freedom on the Oceans;1275173 Wrote:
>> On Tue, 2011-02-22 at 21:04 -0600, smurphy wrote:

[ ... ]

>> > I just spent 2 days trying to do this and since extensive googling
>> > found no results about this, I am putting this one out there.
>>
>> You can also netboot the flash image. Worked for me with my Ultra 60.

[ ... ]

> Yeah, unfortunately, this is the only Unix box I had in my hobby lab.
> And I couldn't believe that there could be such a problem doing it from
> the same box the way we used to under UFS. Rather than reinstall the
> disks as UFS or try to make a UFS slice under ZFS, or try to setup a
> Windows netboot, or VM a Solaris install, I figured there had to be an
> easier way from an existing standalone Solaris config.

Hmm ... do you have any spare drives you can connect to the
system -- or even replace the existing drives for long enough to make
the flash? Just install a skeleton install of Solaris 10 (*without*
ZFS) on another drive, and use it to boot long enough to flash.

I just did something similar with a Sun Fire V120. I'm actually
using OpenBSD on it -- but wanted to upgrade the flash -- so I put
Solaris 10 on a spare drive which I can swap in and boot from for the
purpose. I'm planning to get four more of these systems, so I'm keeping
that drive loaded until all the systems are done.

Enjoy,
DoN.

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