Recently I’ve had to update an AIX 5.3 over to AIX 6.1. The highest level currently supported by the application is AIX 6.1 TL7 SP4. As I only have AIX 6.1 TL6 DVD media available, and this is for an LPAR running off of a VIOS, there are a couple of steps involved. As I would rather test it out on a test system first, I set off to do that.
= VIOS test_upgrade LPAR setup =
First let’s setup a test_upgrade LPAR. For this I created a system with the following:
Memory = 4GB
storage = virtual disk at 30GB
CPU = 1CPU (using a microfraction of like 0.4)
Network = a shared Shared Ethernet Adapter
= mksysb backup =
Now as I have a pre-existing mksysb backup of the system in question, you can restore the mksysb into your new test_upgrade LPAR by a couple of different methods. 1) Use your nim server to do a BOS_INSTALL or 2) use mkdvd and create a bootable ISO from the mksysb image. In my case, I prefer to use the latter of the two as I find it pretty much idiot-proof. So let’s do that.
Log into your nim master, and run a command such as:
mkdvd -C /usr/share/nim/cdimage/cdfs/ -I /usr/share/nim/cdimage/ -m /usr/share/nim/mksysb/my53system-mksysb -R -S
This will create an image file in /usr/share/nim/cdimage. When it’s completed you can rename that to test_upgrade.iso (adjust to your preference). Now I want to put that on the VIOS. So connect to your VIOS and ensure there is enough space in your virtual media repository (df -m is sufficient for this). If you haven’t created a virtual repository yet, you can refer to my previous post of VIOS for an example on how to do this.
Assuming you have enough space, you should transfer the test_upgrade.iso file to your ‘online repository’. I personally use scp for this task. NOTE: if you set the test_upgrade.iso as read-only, you can share it amongst multiple virtual disks at the same time.
The next steps can be done via cli or from the IVM webpage. The IVM webpage is definetely easier, however, it depends on your preference.
= Assigning the test_upgrade.iso to test_upgrade partition in IVM =
Login to the IVM, this puts you into the “view/modify partitions” window automatically, so you can just click on the “test_upgrade” partition to view/modify it’s properties. Select “optical/tape devices”, click “virtual/optical devices”, then click create device. After the device is created, you can select “modify” and point it to the “test_upgrade.iso” which you copied into your Virtual repository earlier.
Once this is done, you can Hit ok, close out the “partition properties window for test_upgrade” and then click the check box next to the “test_ugprade” partition and select “Activate”. One of your options here is to also “open a console”, so you have control of the partition once it activates.
Once the lpar starts to load, hit 1 to go into your SMS menus, then tell it to boot, install media, cdrom, scsi. Select the cd-rom and tell it to boot “normal mode”. This will boot up the system and launch the installer whereby you install the mksysb to the harddrive. The amount of time to install varies upon the size of the initial mksysb image.
Once the system is installed, you can change the optical/tape device from the test_upgrade.iso over to an AIX 6.1 install media.iso (assuming you already have one and have transferred it to your online virtual repository within the VIOS). Then reboot the system, go into SMS menus and tell the system to boot from the virtual cd-rom again. Within the installer you may wish to change it from the default “media type” of express, over to standard or enterprise. The express installation of AIX is smaller and also has memory limitations. The enterprise version has more extended capabilities which require some additional licenses to be purchased (if I recall, live partition mobility is one of these). Select what is required. Note: Most people will probably go with standard. Also ensure that the “installation type = Migration”.
Once the system is migrated, you can attempt to do a “smit suma” and tell it to use TL7. However, I ran into issues this way, and had to upgrade an alternate method.
= Alternate method to upgrade to AIX 6.1 TL7 =
Go to IBM’s fixcentral, and download say AIX 6.1 TL7 SP4. This will want to dowload roughly 6.4GB of data as the standard LPP files. You can use IBM’s java based tool of DownloadDirector or opt to use an alternate method, such as a ftp site. Either way, once you get these files downloaded, you’ll want to make them accessible to the upgraded aix server (test_upgrade). In my case, I done a FTP download (as my linux system was recently rebuilt and I never had the java client installed for DownloadDirector). Then I installed a NFS server, done an nfs export to the test_upgrade server, and mounted it on a directory there. Then simply done a “smit_updateall” to install all of the updates and bring the server to AIX 6.1 TL7 SP4. If doing this, you may need to “allow” the NFS mount from a linux box. To do this, run this command on the AIX server.
nfso -o nfs_use_reserved_ports=1