Description of the Oracle Solaris Boot Archives

When you install Oracle Solaris, the bootadm command creates a boot archive on your system. A boot archive is a subset of a root file system. This boot archive contains all of the kernel modules, driver.conf files, in addition to a few configuration files. These files are located in the /etc directory. The files in the boot archive are read by the kernel before the root file system is mounted. After the root file system is mounted, the boot archive is discarded by the kernel from memory. Then, file I/O is performed against the root device.

In addition, the bootadm command handles the details of boot archive update and verification. During the process of a normal system shutdown, the shutdown process compares the boot archive's contents with the root file system. If there have been updates to the system such as drivers or configuration files, the boot archive is rebuilt to include these changes so that upon reboot, the boot archive and root file system are synchronized.

Obtaining Information About the Location and Contents of the x86 Boot Archive

The files in the x86 boot archive are located in the /platform/i86pc/amd64/boot_archive directory. You can list the contents of the boot archive by using the bootadm list-archive command, as described in the following procedure. Whenever any files in the boot archive are updated, the archive must be rebuilt. For modifications to take effect, the rebuild of the archive must take place before the next system reboot.

How to List the Contents of the Boot Archive

1. Become the root role.
2. To list the files and directories that are included in the boot archive, type:

   # bootadm list-archive