All,

Here's a quick brain dump on Flash Archives, in case you have run into
these problems before. We have run into several bugs which you may
wish to know about if you need to rely on archives in your
environment. I tried to be as specific as I could, but feel free to
add to this if you have additional information. I'm sure this isn't
perfect.

1. The flash archive script cannot exclude multiple paths until
Solaris 9, Ultra pack 2. We are using Ultra pack 4 with success.

All of the earlier flarcreate scripts do not allow you to exclude
multiple paths. The flarcreate -x option states that you can exclude
paths from archives when creating them, but it can only exclude 1 path
until the later incarnations of the flarcreate script. Any additional
paths which you attempt to add with additional -x options will
overwrite previous paths. Also, trying to work around this by using
the find command and piping the information to a file (using the
flarcreate -f <file> -F option) also fails. The -F option should
limit the archive to only the paths contained in the -f <file>
supplied, but we have found that this does not work.

2. Flash Archives are limited to a size of 4gb.

Flash Archives will not extract correctly if they are over 4gb in
size, which causes a problem in conjunction with not being able to
exclude multiple paths above. The error output for this will look
something like this:

ERROR: Unable to unconfigure the extracted system
ERROR: System installation failed.

3. You should exclude the /var/yp path from your archive if you are
using NIS in your environment. This is not a well known problem with
archives from what I can tell.

If you are using NIS, extracting a Flash Archive to a system will
fail. Apparently the host attempts to contact the NIS master for
configuration information, but then gets stuck when trying to
unconfigure the system, resulting in the similar output to the
following:

fopen: No such file or directory

ERROR: Unable to unconfigure the extracted system

Unable to unconfigure the extracted system

3. When extracting Flash Archives in a NIS environment, do not
attempt to install NIS from the archive. Initialize your host as a
NIS client later. This of course relates to the /var/yp bug that we
discovered the hard way...

Extracting NIS from a Flash Archive simply fails. We have tried it
using Solaris 8 with the following output:

fopen: No such file or directory

ERROR: Unable to unconfigure the extracted system

Unable to unconfigure the extracted system

It fails with different output on Solaris 9, which is probably related
to the /var/yp bug on the front end:

Customizing system files
- Mount points table (/etc/vfstab)
- Unselected disk mount points
(/var/sadm/system/data/vfstab.unselected)
- Network host addresses (/etc/hosts)
WARNING: Could not set file attributes
(/a/var/yp/binding/neodata.com)
WARNING: Could not set file attributes
(/a/var/yp/binding/neodata.com)

ERROR: Unable to copy a temporary file to it's final location

Unable to copy a temporary file to it's final location


Now, here's the good news. The flarcreate script from Solaris 9 can
be used as far back as Solaris 6 with success. We copied it directly
from a patched Solaris 9 host to a Solaris 6 host, and it works like a
charm. Please note that we have not explicitly tested Solaris 7,
although I expect it would work.

I hope this helps, or at least gives you a place to start looking if
you have experienced problems with Flash Archives.

Ted

frogswallow wrote:
> All,
>
> Here's a quick brain dump on Flash Archives, in case you have run into
> these problems before. We have run into several bugs which you may
> wish to know about if you need to rely on archives in your
> environment. I tried to be as specific as I could, but feel free to
> add to this if you have additional information. I'm sure this isn't
> perfect.
>
> 1. The flash archive script cannot exclude multiple paths until
> Solaris 9, Ultra pack 2. We are using Ultra pack 4 with success.
>
> All of the earlier flarcreate scripts do not allow you to exclude
> multiple paths. The flarcreate -x option states that you can exclude
> paths from archives when creating them, but it can only exclude 1 path
> until the later incarnations of the flarcreate script. Any additional
> paths which you attempt to add with additional -x options will
> overwrite previous paths. Also, trying to work around this by using
> the find command and piping the information to a file (using the
> flarcreate -f <file> -F option) also fails. The -F option should
> limit the archive to only the paths contained in the -f <file>
> supplied, but we have found that this does not work.

Hmm.. What is Ultra pack 2? I knew that at some point the -x option
wasnt excluding all the paths. Its fixed and I did create flash images
on both Solaris 8 and 9 boxes. I dont recall the patch number on top of
my head.

> 2. Flash Archives are limited to a size of 4gb.
>
> Flash Archives will not extract correctly if they are over 4gb in
> size, which causes a problem in conjunction with not being able to
> exclude multiple paths above. The error output for this will look
> something like this:
>
> ERROR: Unable to unconfigure the extracted system
> ERROR: System installation failed.

Initially the flash archives were said to be limited to a size of 2gb. I
confirmed with a Sun Engineer that there is not any size limit on it.
This might be something related to cpio patch 110297-05??

>
> 3. You should exclude the /var/yp path from your archive if you are
> using NIS in your environment. This is not a well known problem with
> archives from what I can tell.
>
> If you are using NIS, extracting a Flash Archive to a system will
> fail. Apparently the host attempts to contact the NIS master for
> configuration information, but then gets stuck when trying to
> unconfigure the system, resulting in the similar output to the
> following:
>
> fopen: No such file or directory
>
> ERROR: Unable to unconfigure the extracted system
>
> Unable to unconfigure the extracted system
>
> 3. When extracting Flash Archives in a NIS environment, do not
> attempt to install NIS from the archive. Initialize your host as a
> NIS client later. This of course relates to the /var/yp bug that we
> discovered the hard way...
>
> Extracting NIS from a Flash Archive simply fails. We have tried it
> using Solaris 8 with the following output:
>
> fopen: No such file or directory
>
> ERROR: Unable to unconfigure the extracted system
>
> Unable to unconfigure the extracted system
>
> It fails with different output on Solaris 9, which is probably related
> to the /var/yp bug on the front end:
>
> Customizing system files
> - Mount points table (/etc/vfstab)
> - Unselected disk mount points
> (/var/sadm/system/data/vfstab.unselected)
> - Network host addresses (/etc/hosts)
> WARNING: Could not set file attributes
> (/a/var/yp/binding/neodata.com)
> WARNING: Could not set file attributes
> (/a/var/yp/binding/neodata.com)
>
> ERROR: Unable to copy a temporary file to it's final location
>
> Unable to copy a temporary file to it's final location
>
>
> Now, here's the good news. The flarcreate script from Solaris 9 can
> be used as far back as Solaris 6 with success. We copied it directly
> from a patched Solaris 9 host to a Solaris 6 host, and it works like a
> charm. Please note that we have not explicitly tested Solaris 7,
> although I expect it would work.

I did use Live upgrade with flash and the flash was built out of a
system thats already in NIS and the clients I jumped with the same flash
worked fine upon reboot. I had problems with LU but not with flash.

>
> I hope this helps, or at least gives you a place to start looking if
> you have experienced problems with Flash Archives.
>
> Ted

"Shivakanth Mundru" <smundrunospam@cox.net> wrote in message
news:SWfkc.11768$bS1.1053@okepread02...
[...]
>
> > 2. Flash Archives are limited to a size of 4gb.
> >
> > Flash Archives will not extract correctly if they are over 4gb in
> > size, which causes a problem in conjunction with not being able to
> > exclude multiple paths above. The error output for this will look
> > something like this:
> >
> > ERROR: Unable to unconfigure the extracted system
> > ERROR: System installation failed.
>
> Initially the flash archives were said to be limited to a size of 2gb. I
> confirmed with a Sun Engineer that there is not any size limit on it.
> This might be something related to cpio patch 110297-05??
>

At least on Solaris 8 there was a bug in installer that could not extract
flash archives over appr. 5GB. I do not remember patch number off-head, this
patch had to be applied to miniroot of boot server used for installation,
not to the system where archive has been created.

We successfully installed large number of systems with flash archive over
7GB in size (completely preconfigured system image including Oracle and
application stuff).

regards

=arvi=

> + On 29-Apr-04 20:40:05
+frogswallow <thomas_e_ward@yahoo.com> wrote

>All,

>Here's a quick brain dump on Flash Archives, in case you have run into
>these problems before. We have run into several bugs which you may
>wish to know about if you need to rely on archives in your
>environment. I tried to be as specific as I could, but feel free to
>add to this if you have additional information. I'm sure this isn't
>perfect.

>1. The flash archive script cannot exclude multiple paths until
>Solaris 9, Ultra pack 2. We are using Ultra pack 4 with success.

>All of the earlier flarcreate scripts do not allow you to exclude
>multiple paths. The flarcreate -x option states that you can exclude
>paths from archives when creating them, but it can only exclude 1 path
>until the later incarnations of the flarcreate script. Any additional
>paths which you attempt to add with additional -x options will
>overwrite previous paths. Also, trying to work around this by using


[ cut ]

I seen this being mentioned before but I have created several
flash archives with several paths excluded in Solaris8.

I'm totally sure of this, coz it's been on machines that had
alot of stuff I didnt want to include in the archive, for
example the "remote" filsystem /afs that includes tons of terabytes..

I's possible that it didnt work in some environments, but it worked for me.