Solaris Flash Archives

This installment enhancement is new in the Solaris Express 2/06 release.

This Solaris Flash enhancement enables a user to create an archive that includes large files. The flarcreate command creates a Solaris Flash archive that can contain individual files of 4-Gbyte or more. The available archive utilities are:

• The portable archive interchange, pax utility. This utility can create an archive without size limitations on individual files. The pax utility is the default archiving utility.

• The cpio archive utility. This utility is invoked by using the -L cpio option. The cpio utility can archive individual files not larger than 2-Gbyte or 4-Gbyte. The file size limitation depends on the version of the cpio utility.

The pax utility was included in the Solaris 7 OS release. The Solaris Flash archives created by using the pax utility can only be deployed on a Solaris OS with a pax utility. When a user deploys the archive on systems that are running the Solaris 2.6 or earlier versions, the user must use the -L cpio option.

For more information, see the pax(1) and the cpio(1) man pages. See also the Solaris Express Installation Guide: Solaris Flash Archives (Creation and Installation).