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System Administration Guide: Basic Administration     Oracle Solaris 11 Express 11/10
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Document Information

Preface

1.  Managing User Accounts and Groups (Overview)

2.  Managing User Accounts and Groups (Tasks)

3.  Introduction to Shutting Down and Booting a System

4.  Shutting Down and Booting a System (Overview)

5.  Shutting Down a System (Tasks)

6.  Modifying Oracle Solaris Boot Behavior (Tasks)

7.  Booting an Oracle Solaris System (Tasks)

8.  Troubleshooting Booting an Oracle Solaris System (Tasks)

9.  Managing the Oracle Solaris Boot Archives (Tasks)

Managing the Oracle Solaris Boot Archives (Task Map)

Description of the Oracle Solaris Boot Archives

Managing the boot-archive Service

How to Enable or Disable the boot-archive Service

Administering Automatic Boot Archive Recovery

x86: How to Clear Automatic Boot Archive Update Failures by Using the auto-reboot-safe Property

How to Clear Automatic Boot Archive Update Failures by Using the bootadm Command

Using the bootadm Command to Manage the Boot Archives

How to Manually Update the Boot Archive by Using the bootadm Command

How to List Contents of the Boot Archive

x86: How to Locate the Active GRUB Menu and List Current Menu Entries

x86: How to Set the Default Boot Entry for the Active GRUB Menu

10.  x86: GRUB Based Booting (Reference)

11.  Managing Services (Overview)

12.  Managing Services (Tasks)

Index

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


Note - In some releases, two primary boot archives (one 32-bit archive and one 64-bit archive) are created at installation time. The 32-bit archive is located in /platform/i86pc/boot_archive. The 64-bit archive is located in /platform/i86pc/amd64/boot_archive.


The files that make up the SPARC boot archives are located in the /platform directory.

The contents of this directory are divided into three groups of files:

The files that make up the x86 boot archives are located in the /platform/i86pc directory.

In certain releases, the contents of this directory are divided into two groups of files:

To list the files and directories that are included in the boot archives, use the bootadm list-archive command.

If any files in the archive are updated, the boot archive must be rebuilt. For modifications to take effect, the rebuild of the archive must take place before the next system reboot.