[comp.sys.sun] Upgrading a network of Sun386i's to 4.0.1

meo@gatech.edu (Miles O'Neal) (01/18/89)

daedalus!kovar%husc4@talcott.harvard.edu (-David C. Kovar) writes:
>According to the upgrade documentation, I'm
>going to have to reenter the account information for 200 accounts via SNAP
>and they're going to have to reenter their passwords....

We threw out the idea of using SNAP a while back. It's a good idea, but
like most everyone else's attempt that I've seen, the execution is flawed.

>...Will I break anything if I just restore /etc/passwd, /etc/auto.home,
>and the like from tape and remake the YP server?...

I don't know - I *do* know that you have to at least save /etc/yppasswd
and /etc/ypgroup - this is where SNAP puts its entries.

>...There appears to
>be an unreasonable amount of "print out the XXX file and reenter it by
>hand when you reconfigure the system after the upgrade." Is there a way to
>do this upgrade more efficiently, and more quickly?

We backed everything up to tape (forget this floppy trash) and did
selective backups. Still a pain, but quicker than their idea. Be real
careful to restore ONLY your stuff, or disaster may strike.

I have a name & address at Sun to write with comments about this upgrade
process - send email to me at gatech!stiatl!meo if you want it.

-Miles

jim@eda.com (Jim Budler) (01/19/89)

daedalus!kovar%husc4@talcott.harvard.edu (-David C. Kovar) writes:
> ...I'm
> going to have to reenter the account information for 200 accounts via SNAP
> and they're going to have to reenter their passwords.... Will I
> break anything if I just restore /etc/passwd, /etc/auto.home, and the like
> from tape and remake the YP server?

I can't think why anything would break. My yellow pages master is on a
sun3, sunOS 3.5. So it didn't change at all when we upgraded our four
sun386i's. Everything still worked fine.

> ...There appears to
> be an unreasonable amount of "print out the XXX file and reenter it by

Well, it newfs's /, /usr, and /files. That's definately "trashed".

> hand when you reconfigure the system after the upgrade." Is there a way to
> do this upgrade more efficiently, and more quickly?

I unloadc'd all the clusters, and modified the installation script to NOT
newfs /files. So the user directories weren't trashed.

jim

Jim Budler   address = uucp: ...!{decwrl,uunet}!eda!jim
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