Boot disk management utility

Abstract

A computer utility for reducing downtime required for applying patches to a UNIX system, and for allowing changes to the system to be rolled back in the event of problems with a patch.

Description

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

Many critical UNIX systems have the highest availability requirements. These systems have the requirement of being constantly patched to the current level for operating systems to minimize the potential service outage due to a known issue. Patches are often released daily. Unfortunately, these two requirements are contradictory. Patching introduces downtime, often excessive downtime. Current patching state of the art also has weaknesses in the patch removal process, again introducing more downtime on systems that cannot tolerate it.

Eliminating downtime required for applying patches would be ideal but unobtainable due to the nature of the underlying UNIX based operating system and the fact that that many patches require downtime for a reboot. There is a need to minimize downtime to simply the boot time required for this most intrusive of operations.

BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

The current invention addresses the needs present in the prior art.

The present invention is directed to a method and system for reducing downtime of a computer system during system maintenance. An operating environment is run on a primary boot disk while system maintenance is performed on a secondary boot disk. This system maintenance includes identifying patches to be applied to the system, queuing the patches to be applied, and applying the patches. A reboot is performed to the secondary boot disk while the primary boot disk is maintained as a back-up boot environment. Optionally, the primary boot disk may initially be mirrored to the secondary boot disk, or, the operating environment may initially be copied from the secondary boot disk to the primary boot disk.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 a illustrates a common initial boot disk configuration for an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 1 b illustrates a boot disk configuration for an embodiment of the present invention after mirrors have been broken.

FIG. 1 c illustrates a boot disk configuration for an embodiment of the present invention after a Boot Environment has been created on an inactive disk.

FIG. 1 d illustrates a boot disk configuration for an embodiment of the present invention after the system has been rebooted to a new Boot Environment.

FIG. 1 e illustrates a boot disk configuration for an embodiment of the present invention after references to the original boot disk have been deleted.

FIG. 1 f illustrates the recycling of a boot disk in an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 1 g illustrates a boot disk configuration for an embodiment of the present invention after a boot disk has been recycled.

FIG. 1 h illustrates a boot disk configuration for an embodiment of the present invention after a boot disk has been recycled.

FIG. 1 i illustrates a boot disk configuration for an embodiment of the present invention after a boot disk has been freed up for use as a new Boot Environment.

FIG. 1 j illustrates a boot disk configuration for an embodiment of the present invention where a new Boot Environment is created on an unused disk.

FIG. 1 k illustrates a boot disk configuration for an embodiment of the present invention after a system has been rebooted to a modified Boot Environment.

FIGS. 1 l and 1m illustrate a boot disk configuration for an embodiment of the present invention after a system has been rebooted to a modified Boot Environment.

FIG. 1 n illustrates a boot disk configuration for an embodiment of the present invention with fully mirrored, redundant boot disks.

FIG. 2 a is a flow chart of the operations that are performed in an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 b is a flow chart of the operations that are performed in an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 c is a flow chart of the operations that are performed in an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 d is a flow chart of the operations that are performed in an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 e is a flow chart of the operations that are performed in an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 f is a flow chart of the operations that are performed in connection with system maintenance in an embodiment of the present invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

Reference will now be made in detail to the preferred embodiments of the present invention, examples of which are illustrated in the accompanying drawings. It is to be understood that the figures and descriptions of the present invention included herein illustrate and describe elements that are of particular relevance to the present invention, while eliminating, for purposes of clarity, other elements. Those of ordinary skill in the art will recognize that other elements may be desirable and/or required in order to implement the present invention. However, such elements are well known in the art, and because they do not facilitate a better understanding of the present invention, a discussion of such elements is not provided herein.

The invention described herein allows a user to reduce downtime due to maintenance activities. Because only one boot disk has the patch or patches initially installed, the changes can be rolled back to a secondary boot disk. The invention also allows a system to be examined, with only patches applicable to that system being queued for application. The patches are then applied to a Boot Environment (“BE”) rather than the live operating system boot disk. The invention further allows a user to create and retain as many BEs as a system has spare local disks.

The invention described herein relates to eliminating downtime required for applying patches to a UNIX system. While the embodiment described herein specifically applies to a Sun Microsystems Solaris/Veritas environment, the invention can be equally applied to all variants of UNIX systems using appropriate variations on the commands described herein. Such variations will be known to those skilled in the art.

The exemplary embodiment of the present invention described herein operates in connection with a system that satisfies the following prerequisites:

• • 1. Sun Microsystems Solaris 2.6, 7, 8, or 9 versions of UNIX.
  • 2. Veritas Volume Manager 3.1, 3.1.1, 3.2, or 3.5.
  • 3. The boot disk of the system must be under Veritas Volume Manager control (i.e., the boot disk must be encapsulated.
  • 4. An unused direct-attached disk, which will be used to create a duplicate of the existing boot disk.
  • 5. The system using the utilities must have access to a patch repository, and any meta-data required to determine which patches can be applied to the system, via NFS, HTTP, etc.
  • 6. The system must have access to Perl 5.6.1 or later.
    • If this is the first time the utility of the present invention is being used on a system, the procedure for creating the first BE is slightly different than the procedure for creating subsequent ones. This description outlines the process, and discusses when and how the original boot disk should be recycled once proper functioning of the new BE is verified. The concepts and requirements for a BE disk are discussed in detail below.

FIG. 1 a shows a common initial boot disk configuration for an embodiment of the present invention. The primary boot disk 100 is known as rootdisk, whereas the secondary boot disk 101 is known as disk01. The OpenBoot PROM may be configured, depending on the system, with aliases to allow a user to boot to either disk 100 or 101, and to boot to the other disk in case booting to the first one fails. Many systems will have the following definitions:

• boot-device=vx-rootdisk vx-disk01
• nvramrc=devalias vx-rootdisk . . .
• devalias vx-disk01 . . .

For this example, it is assumed that boot disks 101 and 102 are the only two disks available that can be used with the utility. Thus, one of the disks must be freed up. In this case, disk01 will be freed up, which entails the following steps:

• • Delete the VxVM plexes (mirrors) that reside on boot disk 101, thus breaking the associations between boot disk 100 and boot disk 101.
  • Delete the VxVM disk media record for disk01, thus freeing it for other uses.
  • Delete the OBP alias for disk01 and remove it from the boot-device list. Use vxeeprom devunalias . . . AND eeprom boot-device=“ . . . ”

The procedures to accomplish these steps is as follows:

• • Use vxprint to get the name of the disk used as a boot disk mirror, as well as the mirror plexes for each volume that is mirrored from the boot disk. In the example below, note the following:
    • 1. rootdisk is the primary boot disk, and is on device c0t0d0s2. disk01 (not all systems use this name) is the mirror boot disk, and is on device c0t1d0s2.
    • 2. Using the -ht option to the vxprint command produces a hierarchical printout of each Veritas Volume: Each Volume (lines starting with v), is composed of one or more Plexes (lines starting with pl), each of which contains a copy of the entire contents of the volume. Each Plex is composed of one or more Subdisks (lines starting with sd).

3. Each of the volumes in the rootdg disk group has a second plex, or mirror, whose subdisks are located on the disk01 disk. Each of these plexes must be removed recursively so that the disk on which their subdisks reside can be removed.

# vxprint -g rootdg -ht
DG NAME	NCONFIG	NLOG	MINORS	GROUP-ID
DM NAME	DEVICE	TYPE	PRIVLEN	PUBLEN	STATE
RV NAME	RLINK_CNT	KSTATE	STATE	PRIMARY	DATAVOLS	SRL
RL NAME	RVG	KSTATE	STATE	REM_HOST	REM_DG	REM_RLNK
V NAME	RVG	KSTATE	STATE	LENGTH	READPOL	PREFPLEX	UTYPE
PL NAME	VOLUME	KSTATE	STATE	LENGTH	LAYOUT	NCOL/WID	MODE
SD NAME	PLEX	DISK	DISKOFFS	LENGTH	(COL/)OFF	DEVICE	MODE
SV NAME	PLEX	VOLNAME	NVOLLAYR	LENGTH	(COL/)OFF	AM/NM	MODE
DC NAME	PARENTVOL	LOGVOL
SP NAME	SNAPVOL	DCO
dg rootdg	default	default	0	1039102710.1025.nj3225c-5
dm rootdisk	c0t0d0s2	sliced	2888	71127179	—
dm disk01	c0t1d0s2	sliced	2888	71121402	—
sd rootdiskPriv	—	rootdisk	2120526	2888	PRIVATE	c0t0d0	ENA
v 0	—	ENABLED	ACTIVE	41113359	ROUND	—	fsgen
pl 0-01	0	ENABLED	ACTIVE	41113359	CONCAT	—	RW
sdrootdisk-03	0-01	rootdisk	30013820	41113359	0	c0t0d0	ENA
pl 0-02	0	ENABLED	ACTIVE	41113359	CONCAT	—	RW
sd disk01-03	0-02	disk01	22727763	41113359	0	c0t1d0	ENA
v rootvol	—	ENABLED	ACTIVE	2120526	ROUND	—	root
pl rootvol-01	rootvol	ENABLED	ACTIVE	2120526	CONCAT	—	RW
sd rootdisk-B0	rootvol-01	rootdisk	2120525	1	0	c0t0d0	ENA
sd rootdisk-02	rootvol-01	rootdisk	0	2120525	1	c0t0d0	ENA
pl rootvol-02	rootvol	ENABLED	ACTIVE	2120526	CONCAT	13	RW
sd disk01-01	rootvol-02	disk01	0	2120526	0	c0t1d0	ENA
v swapvol	—	ENABLED	ACTIVE	20607237	ROUND	—	swap
pl swapvol-01	swapvol	ENABLED	ACTIVE	20607237	CONCAT	—	RW
sd rootdisk-01	swapvol-01	rootdisk	2123414	20607237	0	c0t0d0	ENA
p1 swapvol-02	swapvol	ENABLED	ACTIVE	20607237	CONCAT	—	RW
sd disk01-02	swapvol-02	disk01	2120526	20607237	0	c0t1d0	ENA
v var	—	ENABLED	ACTIVE	7283169	ROUND	—	fsgen
pl var-01	var	ENABLED	ACTIVE	7283169	CONCAT	—	RW
sd rootdisk-04	var-01	rootdisk	22730651	7283169	0	c0t0d0	ENA
pl var-02	var	ENABLED	ACTIVE	7283169	CONCAT	—	RW
sd disk01-03	var-02	disk01	22727763	7283169	0	c0t1d0	ENA

• • Remove each volume's mirror plex. In this case the plexes to remove are highlighted above: rootvol-02, swapvol-02, var-02, and 0-02. The commands below also remove the subdisks contained in each plex.
    • # vxplex -g rootdg -o rm dis rootvol-02
    • # vxplex -g rootdg -o rm dis swapvol-02
    • # vxplex -g rootdg -o rm dis var-02
    • # vxplex -g rootdg -o rm dis 0-02
  • Remove the mirror disk 101 (disk01) from the rootdg disk group. This frees this disk up for use as a BE.
    • # vxdg -g rootdg rmdisk disk01
  • Remove the alias for disk vxdisk01.
    • #/etc/vx/bin/vxeeprom devunalias vx-disk01
  • Remove the vx-disk01 alias from the OpenBoot PROM boot-device list, if it is there.
    • # eeprom boot-device=“vx-rootdisk”

FIG. 1 b shows the result of taking these actions. At this point, a BE can be created on the unused disk 101 (the device name for this disk is c0t1d0s2) using the be-create command. In this example, the BE will be given the name vmupgrade:

# be_create --BE=vmupgrade --device=c0t1d0

The system may be configured to detect that this is the first time the utility is being run on this host, and may create a special BE configuration record for the original boot disk 100, named “orig”. This is simply a placeholder, and no other changes are required to the original boot disk. The system may also make changes to the OBP settings to make them consistent with the original disk's new BE name. This step may also be accomplished manually.

The be_create program may produce output giving a user the status, and may log more detailed information in /var/log/BE.log. The resulting BE may also be bootable as part of the creation procedure.

The result of these actions is shown in FIG. 1c. Note that the OBP alias for the new BE is:

vx-Bename.

At this point, the new BE can be mounted (at /.lbbe.vmupgrade/) and changes can be made to it that will be seen when the system is booted to the new BE. The BE can be mounted with the following command:

# be_mount --BE=vmupgrade

At this point, maintenance can be performed on the new BE, which is safe because disk 101 is inactive, while boot disk 100 is currently active. Modifications may be handled by various utility scripts, and these scripts have their own documentation that varies from release to release. Once the desired modifications have been made, the BE must be unmounted before attempting to boot to it:

# be_umount --BE=vmupgrade

The system can now be booted to the new BE at the user's convenience:

#reboot -- vx-vmupgrade

Depending on the system, rebooting twice in quick succession may be required. This may also be documented in the modification procedure and may appear as part of the upgrade script output. This is because the installation of the new VxVM product requires the first reboot to occur with the Volume Manager disabled, because entirely new VxVM devices have to be created by the new loadable kernel modules that come with the new Volume Manager. Immediately after this boot, the Volume Manager can be re-enabled and rebooted again. When the system comes back up, the Volume Manager will be active again. This expands the “reboot” command above to be:

# reboot -- vx-vmupgrade

<Wait for System to Reboot and log in as Root>

# cd /etc

# cp vfstab.vm vfstab

# cp system.vm system

# reboot -- vx-vmupgrade

<System will Reboot with the Volume Manager Enabled>

The results of taking these actions are shown in FIG. 1d.

Now the system is running on the new BE, and the original BE is inactive. However, to maintain this, a manual change is needed to the OpenBoot PROM settings. At this point, an OBP alias exists for both disks, but only one of the disks will ever be automatically booted from the original disk unless a manual change is made to the OBP settings. In the preferred embodiment, this set up is intentional, as there is always a chance that the new BE may not work properly on any given system, and it is preferable to require explicitly booting to the new BE until it can be ensured that it boots properly. At this point, the OBP boot-device setting should look as follows:

boot-device=vx-rootdisk vx-rootmirror

Since the vx-rootmirror was destroyed earlier, it may be removed. Also, a user wanting to boot to the new BE by default will need to add its alias (vx-vmupgrade) to the front of the OBP boot-device setting with a command such the following:

# eeprom boot-device=“vx-vmupgrade vx-rootdisk”

At this point, when a standard reboot, init 6, or other system restart command is issued, the system will attempt to boot to the new BE disk; if this fails, the original boot disk will be used.

In the preferred embodiment, it is typical to run the system this way for at least a few days before recycling the original boot disk to be used as a mirror of the new BE. The reasons for doing this are as follows:

• • The new BE may not be suitable for the system for any number of reasons, e.g., old applications that depend upon old bugs in the system that have been patched in the new BE, unusual hardware configurations may not act well with the changes on the new BE, etc. These problems may present themselves immediately, or not for a few days. If the original BE is destroyed right away, the opportunity to roll back changes and trying again is lost.
  • Even if a disk failure occurs on the new BE, the change made to the OBP will ensure that it will boot back to the original disk, and will at least be up and running while maintenance is performed on the other disk. Exposure to this kind of problem will be limited to the amount of time the original boot disk is maintained.

Once the new BE's stability has been verified, the original boot disk 100 may be recycled so that it can be used as a mirror for the new BE. This requires deleting the “orig” BE that was specially created around the original boot disk 100. All references to the original boot disk must be deleted from the OBP. Although it is possible to accomplish this in one command, for this example, the following steps will be used:

# be_delete --BE=orig

<Save a Copy of the Device Pointed to by the OBP Alias vx-rootdisk in /tmp/recycled-device>

# /etc/vx/bin/vxeeprom devalias vx-rootdisk>/tmp/recycled-device

#/etc/vx/bin/vxeeprom devunalias vx-rootdisk

# eeprom boot-device=“vx-vmupgrade”

The results of running these commands are shown seen in FIG. 1e. The system can now only boot to disk 101 with the OBP alias vx-vmupgrade.

The original boot disk 100 is now ready to for recycling. In this example, the standard Veritas Volume Manager techniques are used to carry out these actions, which are illustrated in FIG. 1f:

• • Set up the disk being recycled as part of the rootdg disk group, and name it disk01.
  • Mirror each of the volumes on disk 101 named vmupgrade to disk01.
  • Create an OBP alias for the boot block on disk01, which we preserved earlier in /tmp/recycled-device:
    • # /etc/vx/bin/vxeeprom devalias vx-disk01 ‘cat /tmp/recycled-device’
  • Set up the OBP boot-device setting to allow booting from either of the disks.
    • # eeprom boot-device=“vx-vmupgrade vx-disk01”

The final result of these commands is shown in FIG. 1g, i.e., a fully mirrored, redundant boot disk, with full OBP support for booting to either, manually or automatically.

Subsequent BE creations on a system will now be considered. At the end of the last example, the state of the boot disk mirrors is displayed in FIG. 1h. A new BE will be created to apply exemplary production patches, which will be referred to herein as patch0903. It will also be assumed that these are the only two disks available in the system. Thus, one of these disks must be freed up for use as the new BE. In this case, disk01 will be freed up, requiring the following steps:

• • Delete the VxVM plexes (mirrors) that reside on disk01, thus breaking the associations between rootdisk and disk01.
  • Delete the VxVM disk media record for disk01, thus freeing it for other uses
  • Delete the OBP alias for disk01 and remove it from the boot-device list. Use vxeeprom devunalias . . . AND eeprom boot-device=“ . . . ”

The procedure to accomplish these steps is as follows:

• • Use vxprint to get the name of the disk used as a boot disk mirror, as well as the mirror plexes for each volume that is mirrored from the boot disk. In the example below, note the following:
    • 1. vmupgrade is the primary boot disk, and is on device c0t1d0s2 after the last example was completed. disk01 is the mirror boot disk, and is on device c0t0d0s2.
    • 2. Using the -ht option to the vxprint command produces a hierarchical printout of each Veritas Volume: Each Volume (lines starting with v), is composed of one or more Plexes (lines starting with p1), each of which contains a copy of the entire contents of the volume. Each Plex is composed of one or more Subdisks (lines starting with sd).

3. Each of the volumes in the rootdg disk group has a second plex, or mirror, whose subdisks are located on the disk01 disk. Each of these plexes must be removed recursively so that the disks on which the subdisks reside can be removed.

vxprint -g rootdg -ht
DO NAME	NCONFIG	NLOG	MINORS	GROUP-ID
DM NAME	DEVICE	TYPE	PRIVLEN	PUBLEN	STATE
RV NAME	RLINK_CNT	KSTATE	STATE	PRIMARY	DATAVOLS	SRL
RL NAME	RVG	KSTATE	STATE	REM_HOST	REM_DO	REMRLNK
V NAME	RVG	KSTATE	STATE	LENGTH	READPOL	PREFPLEX	UTYPE
PL NAME	VOLUME	KSTATE	STATE	LENGTH	LAYOUT	NCOL/WID	MODE
SD NAME	PLEX	DISK	DISKOFFS	LENGTH	(COL/)OFF	DEVICE	MODE
SV NAME	PLEX	VOLNAME	NVOLLAYR	LENGTH	(COL/)OFF	AM/NM	MODE
DC NAME	PARENTVOL	LOOVOL
SP NAME	SNAPVOL	DCO
dg rootdg	default	default	0	1039102710.1025.nj3225c-5
dm disk01	c0t0d0s2	sliced	2888	71127179	—
dm vmupgrade	c0t1d0s2	sliced	2888	71121402	—
v 0	—	ENABLED	ACTIVE	41113359	ROUND —	fsgen
p1 0-02	0	ENABLED	ACTIVE	41113359	CONCAT	—	RW
sd disk01-03	0-02	disk01	30013820	41113359	0	c0t0d0	ENA
p1 0-01	0	ENABLED	ACTIVE	41113359	CONCAT	—	RW
sd vmupgrade-03	0-01	vmupgrade	22727763	41113359	0	c0t1d0	ENA
v rootvol	—	ENABLED	ACTIVE	2120526	ROUND	—	root
p1 rootvol-02	rootvol	ENABLED	ACTIVE	2120526	CONCAT	—	RW
sd disk01-02	rootvol-02	disk01	0	2120525	1	c0t0d0	ENA
p1 rootvol-01	rootvol	ENABLED	ACTIVE	2120526	CONCAT	—	RW
sd vmupgrade-01	rootvol-01	vmupgrade	02120526	0	c0t1d0	ENA
v swapvol	—ENABLED	ACTIVE		20607237	ROUND	—	swap
p1 swapvol-02	swapvol	ENABLED	ACTIVE	20607237	CONCAT	—	RW
sd disk01-01	swapvol-02	disk01	2123414	20607237	0	c0t0d0	ENA
p1 swapvol-01	swapvol	ENABLED	ACTIVE	20607237	CONCAT	—	RW
sd vmupgrade-02	swapvol-01	vmupgrade	2120526	20607237	0	c0t1d0	ENA

• • Remove each volume's mirror plex. In this case, the plexes to remove are highlighted above: rootvol-02, swapvol-02, and 0-02. The commands below also remove the subdisks contained in each plex.
    • # vxplex -g rootdg -o rm dis rootvol-02
    • # vxplex -g rootdg -o rm dis swapvol-02
    • # vxplex -g rootdg -o rm dis 0-02
  • Remove the mirror disk (disk01) from the rootdg disk group. This frees this disk up for use as a BE.
    • # vxdg -g rootdg rmdisk disk01
  • Remove the alias for disk vxdisk01.
    • #/etc/vx/bin/vxeeprom devunalias vx-disk01
  • Remove the vx-disk01 alias from the OpenBoot PROM boot-device list, if it's there.
    • # eeprom boot-device-“vx-vmupgrade”FIG. 1i shows the result of taking these actions. At this point, a bootable BE can be created on the unused disk 100 (the device name for this disk is c0t0d0s2) using the be_create command. As discussed earlier, the new BE will be named patch0903: # be_create --BE=patch0903 --device=c0t0d0 The result of these actions is shown in FIG. 1j. Note that the new BE has an OBP alias of vx-patch0903.

At this point, the new BE can be mounted (at /.lbbe.patch0903/) and changes can be made to it that will be seen when the system is booted to it. The BE can be mounted with the following command:

# be_mount --BE=patch0903

Modifications to this BE can be made, treating /.lbbe.patch0903/ as though it was the /directory. Once the desired modifications have been made, the BE must be unmounted before attempting to boot to it:

# be_umount --BE=patch0903

The new BE can be booted to at any time of the user's choosing:

# reboot -- vx-patch0903

The results of taking these actions are seen in FIG. 1k.

Now the system is running on the new BE, and the older BE is inactive. However, to maintain this, a manual change is needed to the OpenBoot PROM settings. At this point, an OBP alias exists for both disks, but only one of the disks will ever be automatically booted from—the original disk—unless a manual change is made to the OBP settings. This set up is intentional, as there is always a chance that the new BE may not work properly on any given system, and it is preferable to require explicitly booting to the new BE until the user is sure that it boots properly. At this point, the OBP boot-device setting should look like this: boot-device=vx-vmupgrade

If the new BE is to be booted to by default, its alias (vx-patch0903) must be added to the front of the OBP boot-device setting:

# eeprom boot-device=“vx-patch0903 vx-vmupgrade”

Now, when a standard reboot, init 6, or other system restart command is issued, the system will attempt to boot to the vx-patch0903 disk; if this fails, the vx-vmupgrade boot disk will be used.

The system may be allowed to run this way for at least a few days before recycling the original boot disk to be used as a mirror of the new BE. The reasons for doing this are as follows:

• • The new BE may not be suitable for the system for any number of reasons, e.g., old applications that depend upon old bugs in the system that have been patched in the new BE, unusual hardware configurations may not act well with the changes on the new BE, etc. These problems may present themselves immediately, or not for a few days. If the original BE is destroyed right away, the opportunity to roll back changes and try again is lost.
  • It is not required to have a mirror of the new BE immediately. If a problem is presented with the new BE (other than a disk failure), it may be caused by a problem with the new BE, and the user may want the original BE to fall back on.
  • Even if a disk failure occurs on the new BE, the change made to the OBP will ensure that the system may be booted back to the original disk, which will at least be up and running while maintenance is performed on the other disk. Exposure to this kind of problem will be limited to the amount of time the original boot disk is maintained.

Once the new BE has been determined to be stable over time, the user may want to recycle the vmupgrade boot disk, so that it can be used as a mirror for the new BE. To do this requires that the “vmupgrade” BE be upgraded. All references to the original boot disk must also be removed from the OBP, but the name of that device should be saved in a file (/tmp/recycled-device in this example), since a new alias for it will be created shortly thereafter. Although it is possible to accomplish the procedure of this paragraph with a single command, in this example the following steps are taken:

# be_delete --BE=vmupgrade

<Save a Copy of the Device Pointed to by the OBP Alias vx-vmupgrade in /tmp/recycled-device>

# /etc/vx/bin/vxeeprom devalias vx-vm upgrade>/tmp/recycled-de vice

#/etc/vx/bin/vxeeprom devunalias vx-vmupgrade

# eeprom boot-device=“vx-patch0903”

This is illustrated in FIGS. 1l and 1m. The system can now only boot to the disk with the OBP alias vx-patch0903.

The former vmupgrade boot disk is now ready for recycling. In this example, the standard Veritas Volume Manager techniques are used to carry out these actions:

• • Set up the disk being recycled as part of the rootdg disk group, and name it disk01.
  • Mirror each of the volumes on the disk named patch0903 to disk01.
  • Create an OBP alias for the boot block on the new disk01, which was preserved earlier in /tmp/recycled-device:
    • # /etc/vx/bin/vxeeprom devalias vx-disk01 ‘cat /tmp/recycled-device’
  • Set up the OBP boot-device setting to allow booting from either of the disks.
    • # eeprom boot-device=“vx-patch0903 vx-disk01” The final result of these commands is shown in FIG. 1n, i.e., a fully mirrored, redundant boot disk, with full OBP support for booting to either, manually or automatically.

It is advantageous that a system have a minimum of three boot disks available, to support the creation of a new BE, while maintaining a mirror of the original boot disk. The present invention will support the use of any number of BE disks, but requires that any boot disk mirror be broken before a new BE can be created. Once a BE is created, the mirror can be restored.

Creating a new BE requires:

• • 1. A locally attached disk to be used as the new BE.
  • 2. The disk which will be used as the new BE must not be under Veritas Volume Manager control prior to creating the BE.
  • 3. The existing boot disk must not be mirrored during the BE creation. Any existing mirror must be destroyed prior to the BE creation. After the creation is complete, the mirror can be recreated.
  • 4. A unique name for the new BE. The name is only required to be unique on a per host basis. The name should be descriptive, as many BEs can be created on a single machine, only limited by the number of free locally attached disks.

The term locally attached disk means any type of disk that is not on the Storage Area Network. This means that any internal drive (including FC-AL drives in systems such as the Sun V880), drives in external drive bays (such as the Sun D130), or drives in external drive arrays that are directly connected with a SCSI cable can be used as BE disks. Note that many smaller systems, such as Sun Netras, have only two internal drives, and these drives are usually mirrors of one another. In these cases, the present invention can still be used, but the mirror will have to be destroyed and used as the new BE. Once the new BE is validated to work well, the original BE can be removed, and used as the new mirror. If a system has only one disk, the present invention cannot be used on it.

In another embodiment of the present invention, the disk device c0t1d0s2 (an internal 36 GB disk on this Sun E420) is to be used as a new BE. First, it is confirmed that this disk is not currently under Veritas Volume Manager control, by using the vxdisk list command, and noting that the “DISK” and “GROUP” columns have dashes (-) in them:

# vxdisk list
	DEVICE	TYPE	DISK	GROUP	STATUS
	c0t0d0s2	sliced	rootdisk	rootdg	online
	c0t1d0s2	sliced	—	—	online
	c1t10d0s2	sliced	disk01	snapdg	online
	c1t11d0s2	sliced	vm35	rootdg	online
	c2t16d0s2	sliced	—	—	error
	c2t16d81s2	sliced	—	—	error
	c2t16d123s2	sliced	disk01	ricks_dg	online
	c2t16d124s2	sliced	—	—	online
	c2t16d125s2	sliced	—	—	online
	c2t16d126s2	sliced	—	—	online
	c2t16d127s2	sliced	—	—	online
	c2t16d128s2	sliced	—	—	online
	c2t16d129s2	sliced	—	—	online
	c2t16d130s2	sliced	—	—	online
	c3t17d0s2	sliced	—	—	error
	c3t17d81s2	sliced	—	—	error
	c3t17d123s2	sliced	—	—	online
	c3t17d124s2	sliced	—	—	online
	c3t17d125s2	sliced	—	—	online
	c3t17d126s2	sliced	—	—	online
	c3t17d127s2	sliced	—	—	online
	c3t17d128s2	sliced	—	—	online
	c3t17d129s2	sliced	—	—	online
	c3t17d130s2	sliced	—	—	online

Next, a name for the new BE has to be chosen, in this example, patch1202.

Finally, in this embodiment of the present invention, templates are used to automatically provide a guideline for sizing the / and /local/0 filesystem volumes, as well as the swap volume. The values in the templates are based upon the size of the drive on which the new BE is being created. At this time, the /usr and /var filesystems (and any other filesystems that are located on the current boot disk only) are collapsed into the / filesystem, but /local/0 is kept separate.

Under normal circumstances, collapsing the filesystems is perfectly acceptable, as this is the recommended configuration from Sun and Veritas since Solaris 2.5 was released. As an added protection, in a preferred embodiment of the present invention, UFS logging is automatically turned on for all UFS filesystem on newly created BEs, for Solaris 7 and later. UFS logging can actually improve filesystem performance, and will prevent the need for an fsck of these filesystems if the system should crash in the future.

With this information, the command to actually create the new BE can now be issued:

# be_create --BE=patch1202 --device=c0t1d0

The first time be_create is run on a system, the current boot disk is given a default BE name of orig. However, in the described embodiment, no OpenBoot PROM alias is created for this BE.

By default, a newly created BE is bootable. There creation process also creates an OpenBoot PROM alias to help boot to the new BE. The alias created will be of the form: vx-{BEname}. Thus, if the new BE's name is patch1202, the OpenBoot PROM alias for it would be: vx-patch1202.

Creating a BE only makes it bootable and creates an alias—it does not change the default boot disk. This is done to prevent the loss of the original default boot device, and to make it easy to boot back to the original BE, if this is needed. To change the default boot device to the BE just activated, a command, such as the one following, can be run inside the Solaris OS:

# eeprom boot-device=vx-patch1202

Alternatively, the following command can be run at the OpenBoot PROM prompt:

ok setenv boot-device vx-patch1202

Once created, a BE can be mounted at a predetermined mount point, so that its contents can manually be altered. This mount point is of the form: /.lbbe.{BEname}. Thus, if the BE name is patch1202, it will be mounted under /.lbbe.patch1202. Note that all of the filesystems that are listed in /etc/vfstab on that BE disk and are physically located on the BE disk are mounted, not just the root (/) filesystem. Some reasons for mounting an inactive BE are:

• • 1. To edit configuration files.
  • 2. To Add/Remove packages.
  • 3. To Remove patches (The be upgrade patching application command automatically mounts/unmounts a BE to perform its work, so a user doesn't have to manually mount a BE to perform patch application). Example: Mount the BE Named Patch1202 # be_mount --BE=patch1202 The BE is now mounted under /.lbbe.patch1202

A package that supports the use of the -R <alternate roots option can be installed on a mounted BE. Note that some packages do not support the use of the -R <alternate root> option. Example: Install the package LBabc on the BE named patch1202—note that this BE has to be mounted before this action can be performed:

#pkgadd -R /.lbbe.patch1202 LBabc

A package that supports the use of the -R <alternate roots option can be removed from a mounted BE. Note that some packages do not support the use of the -R <alternate roots option. Example: Remove the package LBabc from the BE named patch1202—note that this BE has to be mounted before this action can be performed:

#pkgrm -R /.lbbe.patch1202 LBabc

If a BE is mounted and administrative work is carried out on it, it must be subsequently unmounted to make it bootable again.

Example: Unmount the BE Named Patch1202

# be_umount --BE=patch1202

The BE is now unmounted and the /lbbe.patch1202 directory is removed. Note that the BE mounting process makes the BE unbootable until the BE is unmounted again.

It is sometimes desirable to obtain a list of the patches that could be applied to a BE before actually applying them.

Example: Get a Patch Report for the BE Named Patch1202.

# be_patch --BE=patch1202 --report

Note that the be_patch command automatically mounts the named BE before producing a patch report for a BE. It also automatically unmounts the BE before completing.

Certain patches are available for application to a BE via the PatchManager framework. The be-patch tool examines the BE and compares it against the latest approved list of patches for the OS version loaded on the BE and the characteristics of the BE's loaded packages. A patch list customized for this BE is constructed, and can be applied to the BE. It is also possible to obtain a patch report for the BE with the --report option.

Example: Apply the Latest Patches for the BE Named Patch1202, and Get a Patch Report as well.

# be_patch --BE=patch1202 --apply --report

Note that the be_patch command automatically mounts the named BE before applying patches to a BE. It also automatically unmounts the BE before completing.

If a BE no longer serves a purpose, or needs to be destroyed to make room for a new BE to be created, it can be destroyed.

Example: Delete the BE Named Patch1202.

# be_delete --BE=patch1202

The status of all BEs in a system can be determined by running the be_status command:

	CURRENT
# be_status	BOOTABLE
BE_Name DG_Name Disk_Group_ID	DEVICE(s)
orig	rootdg	1039102710.1025.nj3225c-5	NO	YES	c0t0d0
vm35	rootdg	1039106150.1193.nj3225c-5-	YES	YES	c1t11d0
		orig

FIGS. 2 a through 2f are flow charts illustrating preferred embodiments of methods of the present invention.

Referring to FIG. 2a, the operating environment is run on the primary boot disk while system maintenance is performed on the secondary boot disk (step 200). The system is rebooted to the secondary boot disk while the primary boot disk is maintained as a back-up BE (step 202).

Referring to FIG. 2b, an operating environment is copied from the primary boot disk to the secondary boot disk (step 210). The operating environment is run on the secondary boot disk while system maintenance is performed on the primary boot disk (step 212). The primary boot disk is rebooted while the secondary boot disk is maintained as a back-up BE (step 214).

Referring to FIG. 2c, mirrors are broken between the primary boot disk and the secondary boot disk (step 220). The operating environment is then run on the primary boot disk while system maintenance is performed on the secondary boot disk (step 222). The system is rebooted to the secondary boot disk while the primary boot disk is maintained as a back-up BE (step 224).

Referring to FIG. 2d, steps 230, 232, and 234 correspond to steps 220, 222, and 224, respectively, with additional step 236, re-establishing mirrors between the primary boot disk and the secondary boot disk.

Referring to FIG. 2e, a bootable BE is created on the secondary boot disk (step 240). The BE of the secondary boot disk is mounted (step 242). System maintenance is performed on the boot environment of the secondary boot disk (step 244). The BE of the secondary boot disk is unmounted (step 246). The BE is booted on the secondary boot disk (step 248). The original BE of the primary boot disk is deleted (step 250). The primary boot disk is designated as part of the root disk group (step 252). The primary boot disk is renamed (step 254) and the secondary boot disk is mirrored to the primary boot disk (step 256).

Referring to FIG. 2f, the steps involved in system maintenance for an embodiment of the present invention are illustrated. These steps comprise identifying one or more patches to be applied to the system (step 260), queuing the patches for application to the system (step 262), and applying the patches to the system (step 264). Each time system maintenance is performed in connection with the methods illustrated in FIGS. 2a-e, the steps of FIG. 2f may be included.

Following is a list of commands used in the present invention:

• be_Create: Used to create a new BE on an existing disk. The resulting BE is bootable. Prerequisites:

The system must already be under Veritas Volume Manager control.

The boot disk must already be encapsulated or initialized.

Any existing mirrors of the existing boot disk must be removed.

Options:

• --BE=BEname
• Gives a descriptive name (BEname) of the user's choosing to the new BE being created. Note that if this is the first time a BE is being created on the machine in question, a BE record will be created for the existing boot disk as well, and it will be given a predetermined BE name (or prompt the user to give it one). In this way, a user can refer to both the new and the original BEs by name.
• --device=device
• Gives the name of the disk device on which to create the new BE. This device can be in any of the following forms: /dev/[r]dsk/c0t0d0s2, c0t0d0, c0t0d0s2.
• --no_checksum
• By default, be create performs an MD5 checksum on all files copied from the current BE to the new BE. This makes sure that no corruption took place during the copy. If a BE creation is intended only for test use, then this option can decrease the time it takes to create a new BE. be_status: Lists the status of all existing BEs that exist on this host. This is the only way to get a list of all BE names. Options:
• None
• be_mount: Mounts the specified BE at /lbbe.BEname/. Allows users to manually mount a BE so that package or patch adds/removes can be performed manually with the -R /.lbbe.BEname option to pkgadd/pkgrm/patchadd/patchrm commands.
• NOTE: Make sure to unmount a BE (using be_umount) before trying to boot to it—otherwise the boot attempt will fail. Options:
• --BE=BEname
• Gives the name of the BE the user wishes to mount.
• be_umount: Unmounts the specified BE. Deletes the mount point upon completion. Options:
• --BE=BEname
• Gives the name of the BE the user wishes to unmount.
• be_delete: Deletes the specified BE, freeing the disk that contained it for other use. Options:
• --BE=BEname
• Gives the name of the BE the user wishes to delete.
• be_patch: Currently, this utility is used to examine the current patch level of the specified BE, and provide a detailed report of patches that are:

1. Current on this BE.

2. Are totally new to this host (no version of the patch has ever been applied).

3. Updates to patches that are currently applied.

• The utility will also optionally apply any necessary patches to bring the BE up to the latest patch level. Options:
• --BE=BEname
• Gives the name of the BE the user wishes to apply patches to.
• --report
• Gives a detailed patch report.
• --apply
• Makes the utility apply the latest patch updates to this BE, in dependency order.
• --list I --listprod
• List the Production Patch Databases that have been approved by Unix Engineering.
• --listdev
• List the Development Patch Databases.
• --patchdb_rev <tag>
• Selects a particular Patch Database to check out of the central Patch DB CVS repository. The list of tags can be seen with the --list and --listdev options.
• --checksum etc
• Produces a report after patching that describes all configuration files under /etc on the new BE that have been:
  • Added by the patches that were applied
  • Deleted by the patches that were applied
  • Modified by the patches that were applied
• -jumpstart
• When running be-patch non-interactively, this option will prevent the Patch Pro Database parser from displaying a countdown of patch entries being parsed. This keeps the output of the non-interactive run of be-patch clean.

Following is a list of utilities used with the present invention:

• fc_hba_util (/usr/LBBE/bootdiskmanager/utils/fc hba_util) This utility serves 3 purposes:
  • 1. Upgrade the Emulex FibreChannel HBA driver to the latest version.
  • 2. Verify that the configuration of the (latest) HBA driver is correct, and correct it if it is not.
  • 3. Upgrade the Emulex FibreChannel HBA firmware on a live system, one card at a time, while ensuring that PowerPath is fully able to restore all paths through each HBA as its firmware is upgraded. Only then will the utility proceed to the next HBA card.
• This utility will only operate if the latest approved versions of VxVM, VxFS, and PowerPath are already in place on the BE or live boot disk on which this utility is asked to operate. Options:
• --BE=BEname

If given, the specified BE's driver will be checked to see if it needs an upgrade. If so, one will be done, and the configuration of the original driver (usually just the WWPN target numbers) will be copied into the new driver configuration file. The new driver configuration file will also be edited to conform to the EMC SAN fabric recommendations for that driver version (as they vary from version to version). If the driver is already at the proper version, its configuration will be compared against the EMC SAN fabric recommendations for that driver version, and any necessary corrections will be made.

If no options are given, the utility will assume that it is operating on the live boot disk, and will not attempt a driver upgrade. If the latest driver version is loaded though, it will validate and correct its configuration, if needed. The utility will then verify that the latest firmware is loaded on each card, and will upgrade it if needed. This has to be done in real-time, and causes a reset of each card. The utility verifies that all LUNs seen through that card are again visible to both the HBA driver and PowerPath (if in use) before proceeding to the next card's firmware upgrade.

vx35upgrade (/usr/LBBE/bootdiskmanager/bin/vx35upgrade)

This utility is a shell script in this release, and requires a BE name on which to operate. It will not operate on a live boot disk. If necessary, it will upgrade to the latest VxVM, VxFS, VEA, and PowerPath products. If these products are not already installed, it will not install them. They must already be installed when this utility is invoked.

Claims

1. A method of reducing downtime of a computer system during system maintenance, said method comprising the following steps: running an operating environment on a primary boot disk while system maintenance is performed on a secondary boot disk, wherein the system maintenance comprises identifying one or more patches to be applied to the system, queuing the patches for application, and applying the patches; and rebooting to the secondary boot disk while maintaining the primary boot disk as a back-up boot environment.

2. A method of reducing downtime of a computer system during system maintenance, said method comprising the following steps: copying an operating environment from a primary boot disk to a secondary boot disk; running the operating environment on the secondary boot disk while system maintenance is performed on the primary boot disk, wherein the system maintenance comprises identifying one or more patches to be applied to the system, queuing the patches for application, and applying the patches; and rebooting to the primary boot disk while maintaining the secondary boot disk as a back-up boot environment.

3. A method of reducing downtime of a computer system during system maintenance, said computer system comprising a primary boot disk mirrored to a secondary boot disk, said method comprising the following steps: breaking the mirrors between the primary boot disk and the secondary boot disk; running the operating environment on the primary boot disk while system maintenance is performed on the secondary boot disk, wherein the system maintenance comprises identifying one or more patches to be applied to the system, queuing the patches for application, and applying the patches; and rebooting to the secondary boot disk while maintaining the primary boot disk as a back-up boot environment.

4. The method of claim 3 further comprising: re-establishing the mirrors.

5. A boot disk utility for facilitating system upgrades in a computer system, the computer system comprising a root disk group; a primary boot disk, the primary boot disk being encapsulated and comprising an original boot environment and a boot block; and an encapsulated secondary boot disk, the primary boot disk being mirrored to the secondary boot disk, and having a disk media record; the boot disk utility method comprising the following steps: creating a bootable boot environment on the secondary boot disk; mounting the boot environment of the secondary boot disk; performing system maintenance on the boot environment of the secondary boot disk, wherein the system maintenance comprises identifying one or more patches to be applied to the system, queuing the patches for application, and applying the patches; unmounting the boot environment of the secondary boot disk; booting the boot environment on the secondary boot disk; deleting the original boot environment of the primary boot disk; designating the primary boot disk as part of the root disk group; renaming the primary boot disk; and mirroring the secondary boot disk to the primary boot disk.

6. A computer system comprising: a primary boot disk; and a secondary boot disk; wherein an operating system is run on the primary boot disk while system maintenance is performed on the secondary boot disk, wherein the system maintenance comprises identification of one or more patches to be applied to the system, queuing of the patches for application, and application of the patches; and the system is rebooted to the secondary boot disk while the primary boot disk is maintained as a back-up boot environment.

7. A computer system comprising: a primary boot disk; and a secondary boot disk; wherein an operating environment is copied from the primary boot disk to the secondary boot disk, an operating environment is run on the secondary boot disk while system maintenance is performed on the primary boot disk, wherein the system maintenance comprises identification of one or more patches to be applied to the system, queuing of the patches for application, and application of the patches; and the system is rebooted to the primary boot disk while the secondary boot disk is maintained as a back-up boot environment.

8. A computer system comprising: a primary boot disk; and a secondary boot disk; wherein the primary boot disk is mirrored to the secondary boot disk, mirrors are broken between the primary boot disk and the secondary boot disk, an operating environment is run on the primary boot disk while system maintenance is performed on the secondary boot disk, and the system is rebooted to the secondary boot disk while maintaining the primary boot disk as a back-up boot environment wherein the system maintenance comprises identification of one or more patches to be applied to the system, queuing of the patches for application, and application of the patches.

9. The computer system of claim 8, wherein the secondary boot disk is mirrored to the primary boot disk after the system is rebooted to the secondary boot disk.

10. A computer system comprising: a root disk group; an encapsulated primary boot disk comprising an original boot environment, a disk media record, and a boot block; and an encapsulated secondary boot disk; wherein a bootable boot environment is created on the secondary boot disk; the boot environment of the secondary boot disk is mounted; system maintenance is performed on the boot environment of the secondary boot disk, wherein the system maintenance comprises identification of one or more patches to be applied to the system, queuing of the patches for application, and application of the patches; the boot environment of the secondary boot disk is unmounted; the boot environment on the secondary boot disk is rebooted; the original boot environment is deleted from the primary boot disk; the primary boot disk is designated as part of the root disk group; the primary boot disk is renamed; and the secondary boot disk is mirrored to the primary boot disk.