SUMMARY: Solaris 2.5.1 Y2K patchcluster install is very slow / hangs

From: Stefan Voss (s.voss@terradata.de)
Date: Fri Nov 05 1999 - 02:15:30 CST


Hi,

SOLUTION
========

Hmmm, nothing, that I would call a "solution", only some suggestions...

1. I was asked, whther /opt was mounted. Yes, it was, it is on the same partion
as /

2. I was advised to put the machine in single user mode not using "init1", but
with "init 0" and then "boot -s" - this is exactly, what I did.

3. It was suggested, that there was not enough swap space - the machines have
1.2 GB and 500 MB swap respectively, that should be enough.

4. there was enough free space (i.e. more that 4 MB) in /, /var, /usr and /opt
(actually, these four file systems reside on to partitions: / and /usr). On the
machine, where the install hung immediately at the first patch, there was more
than 100 MB free:

machine1# df / /usr
Filesystem kbytes used avail capacity Mounted on
/dev/dsk/c0t3d0s0 96455 27558 59257 32% /
/dev/dsk/c0t3d0s5 394455 91398 263617 26% /usr

machine2# df / /usr
Filesystem kbytes used avail capacity Mounted on
/dev/dsk/c0t3d0s0 384012 214179 131433 62% /
/dev/dsk/c0t3d0s6 384012 195973 149639 57% /usr

It seems, that I have to run the install_cluster overnight (still a very long
time) or that I have to write a script, which installs exactly those patches
which are missing according to sunscan in order to keep the down time as short
as possible (the machines are running 25 hours a day and 8 days a week).

THANKS TO
=========

"Michael J. Connolly" <mjconnly@newton41.ckcorp.com>
Bertrand_Hutin@notes.amdahl.com
John D Groenveld <jdg117@elvis.arl.psu.edu>
"Bill Carroll" <bill.carroll@cc.gte.com>
"Michael J. Connolly" <mjconnly@newton41.ckcorp.com>

ORIGINAN QUESTION
=================

recently, I downloaded the the Solaris 2.5.1 recommended patch cluster and the
y2k patch cluster (as of Oct 21st/20th). Installation of the recommended patches
went fine and surprisingly fast !

However, installing the y2k patches failed: the install_cluster script hanged,
when it checked for the first patch to install ("Checking installed packages and
patches..."). On a second machine, the first 3 or 4 patches could be
installed/checked (but that took a very long time), and then the script hung
(i.e. did nothing for 15 or 30 minutes or so, until a did a Control-C -
obviously the only way to get out of that).

This is, what /var/sadm/install_data/Solaris_2.5.1_y2000_ALL_log contains:
 
 
*** Install Solaris 2.5.1 y2000_ALL begins Fri Oct 29 15:11:14 MET DST 1999 ***
*** PATCHDIR = /mnt/patches/2.5.1_y2000_ALL ***
 
Installing 103891-06...
 
Checking installed packages and patches...

BTW: I installed the patches, when the machine was in single user mode (as
suggested).

Of course, I checked the archive, but found nothing appropriate.

Any ideas ?

Thanks in advance,

                        Stefan

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