How long does the install take?
It depends on the CD-ROM and hard disk speed. On a 300 MHz Pentium witha multispeed SCSI CDROM, from the time "Initial Install" starts, it
only takes about a half hour. Add another half hour for initial probes
and configuration menus. Add a lot more if you have problems, of course.
Upgrades take about 3 hours or more. This is because the system must
determine what critical configuration data must be saved and replace it
on a "per-package basis".
I'm the impatient type and given up totally on system upgrades. Now I
have a separate disk drive which I use for initial installs because it
goes so much faster. With the typical SCSI drives costing in the $200
range it just isn't worth it anymore to do upgrades. But this is my
opinion so take it for what it is worth. I just save the /etc, /opt,
/local, and /export/home directories and selectively restore rather
than upgrade.
Below is typically what I save before doing an initial upgrade. Don't
take this for the ultimate system definition of what you should save,
but it works for my system. Your system may be designed very differently.
The first thing I do is mount the filesystem that has a home directory
with the below critical files and copy them to the appropriate
directories. I'm sure it could be automated but. . . What the
advantage of this process is that I can do an initial install in about
an hour. My home directories are always on another disk partition.
Install_Notes My own release notes
defaultroute If you have one for routing to a DNS server.
df Save the output of df to keep an idea of my disk usage
dfstab /etc/dfs/dfstab for shared file systems
passwd /etc/passwd file
shadow /etc/shadow file
vfstab /etc/vfstab filesystems
[Modified from Bob Palowoda's Solaris 2.4 x86 FAQ]
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