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man pages section 1M: System Administration Commands |
- create a flash archive from a master system
flarcreate -n name [-R root] [-A system_image] [-H] [-I]
[-M] [-S] [-c] [-t [-p posn] [-b blocksize]]
[-i date] [-u section]... [-m master]
[-f [filelist | -] [-F]] [-a author]
[-e descr | -E descr_file] [-L archiver] [-D dataset]
[-T type] [-U key=value]... [-x exclude]...
[-y include]... [-z filelist]... [-X filelist]... archiveThe flarcreate command creates a flash archive from a master system. A master system is one that contains a reference configuration, which is a particular configuration of the Solaris operating environment, plus optional other software. A flash archive is an easily transportable version of the reference configuration.
In flash terminology, a system on which an archive is created is called a master. The system image stored in the archive is deployed to systems that are called clones.
A flash archive can be created on a system that is running a UFS root file system or a ZFS root file system. A flash archive of a ZFS root pool contains the entire pool hierarchy except for the swap and dump volumes and any excluded datasets. The swap and dump volumes are created when the flash archive is installed.
There are two types of flash archives: full and differential. A full archive contains all the files that are in a system image. A differential archive contains only differences between two system images. Installation of a differential archive is faster and consumes fewer resources than installation of a full archive.
In creating a differential archive, you compare two system images. A system image can be any of:
a Live Upgrade boot environment, mounted on some directory using lumount(1M) (see live_upgrade(5))
a clone system mounted over NFS with root permissions
a full flash archive expanded into some local directory
To explain the creation of a differential flash archive, the following terminology is used:
The image prior to upgrade or other modification. This is likely the image as it was installed on clone systems.
The old image, plus possible additions or changes and minus possible deletions. This is likely the image you want to duplicate on clone systems.
The flarcreate command compares old and new, creating a differential archive as follows:
files on new that are not in old are added to the archive;
files of the same name that are different between old and new are taken from new and added to the archive;
files that are in old and not in new are put in list of files to be deleted when the differential archive is installed on clone systems.
When creating a differential flash archive, the currently running image is, by default, the new image and a second image, specified with the -A option, is the old image. You can use the -R option to designate an image other than the currently running system as the new image. These options are described below.
Note that differential flash archives are not supported for a ZFS root file system.
Following creation of a flash archive, you can use JumpStart to clone the archive on multiple systems. Using JumpStart to install one or more systems is the only installation method available for installing a flash archive of a ZFS root pool.
You can run flarcreate in multi- or single-user mode. You can also use the command when the master system is booted from the first Solaris software CD or from a Solaris net image.
Archive creation should be performed when the master system is in as stable a state as possible. Following archive creation, use the flar(1M) command to administer a flash archive.
See flash_archive(4) for a description of the flash archive.
The flarcreate command requires root privileges.
The flarcreate command has one required argument:
Specifies the name of the flash archive. name is supplied as the value of the content_name keyword. See flash_archive(4).
The flarcreate command has the following general options:
Create a differential flash archive by comparing a new system image (see DESCRIPTION) with the image specified by the system_image argument. By default, the new system image is the currently running system. You can change the default with the -R option, described below. system_image is a directory containing an image. It can be accessible through UFS, NFS, or lumount(1M).
The rules for inclusion and exclusion of files in a differential archive are described in DESCRIPTION. You can modify the effect of these rules with the use of the -x, -X, -y, and -z options, described below.
This option is not supported when creating a flash archive of a ZFS root pool.
Compress the archive using compress(1)
Exclude specified datasets from the flash archive. This option can be used multiple times to exclude multiple datasets.
Use the contents of filelist as a list of files to include in the archive. The files are included in addition to the normal file list, unless -F is specified (see below). If filelist is -, the list is taken from standard input. filelist can include directories. If a directory is listed, all files and subdirectories under that directory are included.
This option is not supported when creating a flash archive of a ZFS root pool.
Include only files in the list specified by -f. This option makes -f filelist an absolute list, rather than a list that is appended to the normal file list.
This option is not supported when creating a flash archive of a ZFS root pool.
Do not generate hash identifier.
Ignore integrity check. To prevent you from excluding important system files from an archive, flarcreate runs an integrity check. This check examines all files registered in a system package database and stops archive creation if any of them are excluded. Use this option to override this integrity check.
This option is not supported when creating a flash archive of a ZFS root pool.
By default, the value for the files_archived_method field in the identification section is pax(1). If you specify -L, the archiver (cpio(1) and pax) is used instead.
Used only when you are creating a differential flash archive. When creating a differential archive, flarcreate creates a long list of the files in the system that remain the same, are changed, and are to be deleted on clone systems. This list is stored in the manifest section of the archive (see flash_archive(4)). When the differential archive is deployed, the flash software uses this list to perform a file-by-file check, ensuring the integrity of the clone system. Use of this option to avoids such a check and saves the space used by the manifest section in a differential archive. However, you must weigh the savings in time and disk space against the loss of an integrity check upon deployment. Because of this loss, use of this option is not recommended.
This option is not supported when creating a flash archive of a ZFS root pool.
Create the archive from the file system tree rooted at root. If you do not specify this option, flarcreate creates an archive from a file system rooted at /.
Note - The root file system of any non-global zones must not be referenced with the -R option. Doing so might damage the global zone's file system, might compromise the security of the global zone, and might damage the non-global zone's file system. See zones(5).
Skip the disk space check and do not write archive size data to the archive. Without -S, flarcreate builds a compressed archive in memory before writing the archive to disk, to determine the size of the archive. This size information is written to the header of the archive in the files_archived_size field and is used during archive deployment on the client to ensure enough disk space is available on the client. Use -S to skip this step. The result of the use of -S is a significant decrease in the time it takes to create an archive.
Include the user-defined keyword(s) and values in the archive identification section.
Exclude the file or directory exclude from the archive. Note that the exclude file or directory is assumed to be relative to the alternate root specified using -R. If the parent directory of the file exclude is included with the -y option (see -y include), then only the specific file or directory specified by exclude is excluded. Conversely, if the parent directory of an included file is specified for exclusion, then only the file include is included. For example, if you specify:
-x /a -y /a/b
all of /a except for /a/b is excluded. If you specify:
-y /a -x /a/b
all of /a except for /a/b is included.
This option is not supported when creating a flash archive of a ZFS root pool.
Use the contents of filelist as a list of files to exclude from the archive. If filelist is –, the list is taken from standard input.
This option is not supported when creating a flash archive of a ZFS root pool.
Include the file or directory include in the archive. Note that the include file or directory is assumed to be relative to the alternate root specified using -R. See the description of the -x option, above, for a description of the interaction of the -x and -y options.
This option is not supported when creating a flash archive of a ZFS root pool.
filelist is a list of files prefixed with a plus (+) or minus (-). A plus indicates that a file should be included in the archive; the minus indicates exclusion. If filelist is –, the list is taken from standard input.
This option is not supported when creating a flash archive of a ZFS root pool.
Use the following option with user-defined sections.
Include the user-defined section located in the file section in the archive. section must be a blank-separated list of section names as described in flash_archive(4).
Use the following options with tape archives.
The block size to be used when creating the archive. If not specified, a default block size of 64K is used.
Used only with -t. Specifies the position on the tape device where the archive should be created. If not specified, the current position of the tape device is used.
Create an archive on a tape device. The archive operand (see OPERANDS) is assumed to be the name of the tape device.
The following options are used for archive identification.
author is used to provide an author name for the archive identification section. If you do not specify -a, no author name is included in the identification section.
The description to be included in the archive as the value of the content_description archive identification key. This option is incompatible with -E.
The description to be used as the value of the archive identification content_description key is retrieved from the file descr_file. This option is incompatible with -e.
By default, the value for the creation_date field in the identification section is generated automatically, based on the current system time and date. If you specify the -i option, date is used instead. date is in the format YYYYMMDDhhmmss, so that, for example:
20060905031000
...stands for 3:10 AM on September 5, 2006.
By default, the value for the creation_master field in the identification section is the name of the system on which you run flarcreate, as reported by uname -n. If you specify -m, master is used instead.
Content type included in the archive as the value of the content_type archive identification key. If you do not specify -T, the content_type keyword is not included.
The following operand is supported:
Path to tape device if the -t option was used. Otherwise, the complete path name of a flash archive. By convention, a file containing a flash archive has a file extension of .flar.
The following exit values are returned:
Successful completion.
An error occurred.
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:
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