Upgrading 12SP4 LPAR to 15SP1

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To upgrade 12SP4 LPAR to 15SP1 use:

1. Before upgrade ensure
   1. There is enough free space in / (At least 25GB. 5GB is definitely less and leads to upgrade failure).
   2. The system is registered with latest registration codes. See SuSEConnect commands at Update Suse from SLES 12 SP2 to SLES 15 SP2 with 100MB /boot
   3. Entire LPAR image level backup is taken via Backup of LPAR by booting into Suse installer DVD rescue mode. Expect enough surprises during upgrade.
2. Connect two virtual optical drivers (one for installer and one for packages). See Add Virtual Optical Media to LPAR with desired OS ISO image
3. Start "Upgrade" option after booting through CD using "System management services". See Activating the LPAR (Starting)
   • Press up/down arrow to get grub
4. Ideally we should have taken a backup of system (root) partition before upgrade via Backup of LPAR by booting into Suse installer DVD rescue mode
5. Leave Language and Keyboard to default values and choose Next
6. If there is prompt to enable multipath select 'yes', esp. in case of FC based disks.
7. Give network IP etc. either via DHCP or static. We need direct access to Internet for upgrade to work. Choose next
8. Select Suse12SP4 partition to upddate and choose Next
9. Agree to license and choose next
10. On the repository page choose next
11. If system is not registered with Suse we need Full installer DVD (not two separate installer / packages).
    • Ideally register system and proceed.
    • The system should have been registered with active codes. Sometime the activation codes are renewed yearly. In that case we need to login to suse portal and do a fresh activation / registration before upgrade.
12. Select the migration target
13. Agree to use updated repositories as part of update process
14. Do not select any additional products for installation during upgrade.

    We can install required packages later after upgrade

15. Wait for upgrade to complete

Upgrading x86_64 architecture of SLES

In case of x86_64 architecture instead of power, we can use the DVD images (700MB / 1.2GB) and update offline. In this case the upgrade paths supported eg 12SP3 to 15SP1 might be different then online upgrade. To enable this we may have to give boot options:

Media_upgrade=1

while booting using 15SP1 DVD.

Further, during such upgrade we may get prompted to solve package / extension conflicts. In such case we can choose to ignore (Strictly based on your requirement) some packages such as:

• SLES_BCL
• SLED
• SLE_HPC
• SLE_RT
• Suse-Manager-*

In case of conflict between SLES-15 and SLES_SAP-15 choose:

• Break product SLES-15.1 by ignoring some of its dependencies

Finally in conflict between SLES_SAP-12.3 and SLES-15.1 ideally deinstall SLES_SAP-12.3.

Similarly in case of conflict between SLES_SAP-15 and SLES-15 choose to not install SLES_SAP-15.

Snapshot issue while upgrading

It is possible to get error "Filesystem snapshot could not be created" during upgrade. To solve this used:

1. Press Ctrl+Atl+F2 shortcut and as shown in error message run save_y2logs
2. SCP logs to a different machine
3. In logs open YaST2/y2log to understand the issue. Example logs might be:

   2023-06-22 03:42:38 <1> SV01(4028) [Ruby] yast2/fs_snapshot.rb:317 Executing: "/usr/lib/snapper/installation-helper --step 5 --root-prefix=/mnt --snapshot-type pre --description before\ update --userdata "important=yes" --cleanup number"
   2023-06-22 03:42:38 <3> SV01(4028) [bash] ShellCommand.cc(shellcommand):78 .snapshots must not be world-writable
   2023-06-22 03:42:38 <3> SV01(4028) [bash] ShellCommand.cc(shellcommand):78 reading failed
   2023-06-22 03:42:38 <3> SV01(4028) [bash] ShellCommand.cc(shellcommand):78 .snapshots must not be world-writable
   2023-06-22 03:42:38 <3> SV01(4028) [bash] ShellCommand.cc(shellcommand):78 terminate called after throwing an instance of 'snapper::IOErrorException'
   2023-06-22 03:42:38 <3> SV01(4028) [bash] ShellCommand.cc(shellcommand):78   what():  .snapshots must not be world-writable
   2023-06-22 03:42:38 <3> SV01(4028) [Ruby] yast2/fs_snapshot.rb:323 Snapshot could not be created: /usr/lib/snapper/installation-helper --step 5 --root-prefix=/mnt --snapshot-type pre --description before\ update --userdata "important=yes" --cleanup number returned: {"exit"=>134, "stderr"=>".snapshots must not be world-writable\nreading failed\n.snapshots must not be world-writable\nterminate called after throwing an instance of 'snapper::IOErrorException'\n  what():  .snapshots must not be world-writable\n", "stdout"=>""}

4. Based on this used below in the live OS boot where Suse 15 upgrade was being tried. ( Or we could have done (chmod 750 /.snapshots ) in the older OS being upgraded. In normal boot only path would be /.snapshots instead of /mnt/.snapshots as during OS upgrade)

   chmod 750 /mnt/.snapshots

   This solved the snapshot related error.

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