We have a feature called "cross-platform incremental backups". In a nutshell the process is:

- take a full backup of solaris db
- run a convert program which make the backup a linux backup
- restore the backup to your linux machine

Now before you panic, you do this *not* as part of your migration - it is a preliminary step. You are still running your solaris system and you didn't need to shutdown anything. You do all this live.

You now have a linux system but obviously its "stale". We now do this:

- take an incremental backup on solaris
- run a convert program which make the backup a linux incremental backup
- recovery the incremental to bring your linux db up to date

Same rules apply - you do all this live. No outage yet.

You can do this part as often as you like - at some stage you will decide on a "final" cutover which is:

- shutdown (or disable all access) to solaris
- take a FINAL incremental backup on solaris
- run a convert program which make the backup a linux incremental backup
- recovery the incremental to bring your linux db up to date
- switchover

To make a LOT of this easier, we have a suite of Perl scripts to manage a lot of this automatically. You can get them from MOS Note: 2471245.1 – V4 Reduce Transportable Tablespace Downtime using Cross Platform Incremental Backup