[CentOS] Anything Like Solaris' Live Upgrade?

[xrx]

On 01/28/13 22:14, Tim Evans wrote:
> On 01/28/2013 01:05 PM, xrx wrote:
>> On 01/28/13 21:27, James A. Peltier wrote:
>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>> | Does anyone know of any sort of Linux utility that does something
>>> | like
>>> | what Solaris' Live Upgrade
>>> | (http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19455-01/806-7933/index.html) does?
>>> |
>>> | In my past life as a Solaris sys-admin, I found this an extremely
>>> | useful
>>> | tool for upgrading and patching running systems, as well as for
>>> | maintaining redundant boot environments on separate system disks for
>>> | disaster situations.
>>>
>>> Nothing really until BTRFS comes of age.  I suppose you could snapshot your LVM volumes before performing the upgrade but to my knowledge there is nothing similar to Live Upgrade for CentOS
>>>
>> It does sound like you can do the roughly the same with LVM snapshots.
>> Reading the introduction of the solaris document you linked; it seems as
>> if the solaris upgrade is applied on say a snapshot; and then the system
>> is rebooted into the upgraded environment; and if it works, great, if
>> not you need a reboot back into the original state.
>>
>> Wheras with CentOS 6; you take a snapshot of the root partition (easy as
>> "lvcreate --snapshot --name RootSnapshot --size 2G /dev/VolGroup/Root"),
>> and then do an upgrade with a reboot. If it works; you're set, if not,
>> just revert back to the snapshot (lvconvert --merge
>> VolGroup/RootSnapshot) and reboot; you'd be back to the state before the
>> upgrade.
> Thanks. You also need to manage the grub and fstab configurations to
> allow the second boot environment to be visible, bootable, and mountable.
>
>
Are you talking about CentOS? There is no need to change the fstab or 
grub; the upgrade gets applied on the main volume (where the OS can be 
upgraded on the fly without a reboot if it works out; or optionally with 
a reboot if you want to be extra sure). The snapshot is only there if 
the update goes bad; in which case you'd run the merge command to revert 
back to the original state.


-xrx