System Administration Guide: Oracle Solaris 8 Containers

Chapter 3 Assessing a Solaris 8 System and Creating an Archive

This chapter discusses acquiring information about the Solaris 8 system and creating the archive of the Solaris 8 system.

Assess the Solaris 8 System

Examine the source system and collect needed information.

Obtain the hostname:
hostname
Obtain the host ID:
hostid
Also see Host ID Emulation.
Obtain the RPC domainname:
domainname
Obtain the root password.
View the software being run on the system:
ps -ef
Check the networking utilized on the system:
ifconfig -a
View the storage utilized, for example, by viewing the contents of /etc/vfstab.
View the amount of local disk storage in use, which determines the size of the archive:
df -k
Determine the patches that are on the system:
patchadd -p
Examine the contents of /etc/system.

Creating the Image for Directly Migrating Solaris 8 Systems Into Zones

You can use the Flash Archiving tools to create an image of an installed Solaris 8 2/04 system that can be migrated into a zone. If your Solaris 8 system is patched to the latest recommended list and the SUNWinst package is installed, you already have these tools installed.

The image can be fully configured with all of the software that will be run in the zone. This image is used by the installer when the zone is installed.

See Example 5–1 for information on the installer.

How to Use `flarcreate` to Create the Image

Use this process to create the Solaris 8 2/04 or later system image. This example procedure uses NFS to place the flash archive on the target Solaris 10 system, but you could use any method to move the files.

You must be the global administrator in the global zone to perform this procedure.

Become superuser, or assume the Primary Administrator role.

Log into the Solaris 8 2/04 or later system to archive.

Change directories to the root directory.
# cd /

Use flarcreate to create a flash archive image file named s8-system, and place the archive onto the Solaris 10 system:

s8-system # flarcreate -S -n s8-system /net/s10system/export/s8-system.flar
Determining which filesystems will be included in the archive...
Creating the archive...
cpio: File size of "etc/mnttab" has
increased by 435
2068650 blocks
1 error(s)
Archive creation complete.

Tip –

In some cases, flarcreate can display errors from cpio. Most commonly, these are messages such as File size of etc/mnttab has increased by 33. When these messages pertain to log files or files that reflect system state, they can be ignored. Be sure to review all error messages thoroughly.

Other Archive Creation Methods

You can use alternate methods for creating the archive. The installer can accept the following archive formats:

cpio archives
gzip compressed cpio archives
bzip2 compressed cpio archives
pax archives created with the -x xustar (XUSTAR) format
ufsdump level zero (full) backups

Additionally, the installer can accept a directory of files created by using an archiving utility that saves and restores file permissions, ownership, and links. Thus, an example of a utility that cannot be used is tar, because tar does not handle links.

For more information, see the cpio(1), pax(1), bzip2(1), gzip(1), and ufsdump(1M) man pages.

Host ID Emulation

When applications are migrated from a standalone Solaris 8 system into a solaris8 zone on a new system, the hostid changes to be the hostid of the new machine.

In some cases, applications depend on the original hostid, and it is not possible to update the application configuration. In these cases, the solaris8 zone can be configured to use the hostid of the original system. This is done by setting a zonecfg attribute to specify the hostid, as shown in How to Configure a solaris8 Branded Zone. The value used should be the output of the hostid command as run on the original system. To view the hostid in an installed zone, also use the hostid command.

For more information, see hostid(1).

Setting the Machine Name to `sun4u`

A zonecfg attribute can be used to specify the machine name returned by uname as sun4u, even if the underlying Solaris 10 system is running on an sun4v machine. The setting is shown in How to Configure a solaris8 Branded Zone.

To use this attribute, you must have Solaris 8 Containers patch 128548-07 or higher installed.