[OpenIndiana-discuss] well travelled Q about mving from oi_151a9 to ?

[Nikola M]

On 03/ 8/17 07:14 AM, Harry Putnam wrote:
> setup:
>    SunOS 2x 5.11 oi_151a9 i86pc i386 i86pc
>    Running on HP xw8600 2x of these:
>    Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X5470 @ 3.33GHz XU1 PROCESSOR
Hello thank you for writing up, those CPUs do not have EPT, so can't run 
KVM for illumos out of box,
but are quite nice and more then enough for all tasks.

> I've been running build 151a9 for a good while but starting to see
You can aether update using update procedure over hipster-2015 toward 
/hipster or do fresh install.
For example I used to make new BE (beadm), moun it, delete files in it, 
Install OI hipster in VBox and then zfs send/receive fresh install to 
that same BE, to get fresh install on existing machine, still having old 
/dev BE around.
Just bare in mind that OI hipster since 201610 uses illumos loader in 
place of GRUB, so you might want to install it on boot drive(s) (and not 
to use beadm command from older GRUB BE's anymore).
https://wiki.openindiana.org/oi/MBR+reinstall+after+illumos+loader+update

For now, after loader is installed, GRUB BEs can be booted by first 
selecting from menu (options 6 and 3) and hitting ESC to drop on 'ok' 
prompt and issuing load -t rootfs /platform/i86pc/amd64/boot_archive
Alternatively one needs to mount older non-loader BE with 'beadm mount' 
and 'pkg -R /mnt install loader' to be able to boot in older BE (and not 
using beadm command in older BE)

> really.  Nothing commercial or involving much money.
One can run illumos distros commercially, for whatever use, same like 
other FLOSS (Free Libre Open Source) , like Linux, BSDs etc.

> I need some sage advice about what to move to.  Is hipster likely to
> last a while and be upgradable etc.  Is it likely to install on my
> hardware?  I have it running in 2 vms but one can't really tell how it
> react to real (no oldish) hardware.

Like name suggests, Oi hipste ris in constant changes and once on that 
track you should be following what is going on with testing, updates and 
workarounds and 'release notes'.
OI hipster has 'snapshots' and not releases, meaning reporting bugs, 
research on them and fixing has much shorter time to go into updated IPS 
publisher (repository).
So be prepared to include yourself, because sooner or later you will see 
yourself testing something new, posting a bug report and finding a ways 
to impove distribution altogether.

> But can anyone say how it might go were I to get a successful install
> on my hardware not a vm with 11.3

You are all better with Openindiana hipster, because it is free software 
, open and you can actually do something bout it and change what you 
like instead of just relying on some company and not being able to run 
in any production without contract plus supported hardware...

For instance, I had trouble using Wireless card, but on illumos IRC 
channels I got info to try putting it's info as alias into 
/etc/driver_aliases or with add_drv and my wireless is working, since it 
is working driver, but hardware had a bit different IDs.

> My skill level is very low but somehow... with lots of help here and a
> few other places I've stayed online for several years. With only small
> downtime.
>
> I'd like to move to something I can expect to stay up for maybe 3yrs
> or so without major reinstalls required.
>
> So in blunt terms we have a dope at the helm who stumbles along with
> some help.. I have a working knowledge of zfs but afraid my zpools will
> be so outdated there will be major problems.

Zpools can always be updated, OpenZFS and is usage in illumos brings 
newest features, because Openindiana hipster at the moment, always 
brings newest upstream illumos.

> The good side is currently I have nothing onboard I can't loose or
> could rsync the data onto linux hosts on my local lan.
>
> So not tons of data.. maybe 460 GB total.
>
> Any advice about what to get restarted on that will seem familiar to
> at least some degree, and will be upgradable into the future for
> several yrs.

Do backupand for update, take a look into:
https://wiki.openindiana.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=30802657 for 
update.

Or grab latest 201610 snapshot and do full-disk install , possibly 
mirrored (https://wiki.openindiana.org/oi/2.1+Post-installation).