About Oracle Solaris 9 Branded Zones

A Solaris 9 branded zone (solaris9) is a complete runtime environment for Solaris 9 applications on SPARC machines running the Oracle Solaris 10 8/07 Operating System or later. The brand supports the execution of 32-bit and 64-bit Solaris 9 applications.

solaris9 branded zones are based on the whole root zone model. Each zone's file system contains a complete copy of the software that comprises the operating system. However, solaris9 zones are different from native whole root zones in that central patching is not applied.

Oracle Solaris 10 Features Available to Zones

Many Oracle Solaris 10 capabilities are available to the solaris9 zones, including the following:

• Fault management architecture (FMA) for better system reliability (see smf(5).

• The ability to run on newer hardware that Solaris 9 does not support.

• Oracle Solaris 10 performance improvements.

• DTrace, run from the global zone, can be used to examine processes in solaris9 zones.

• Auditing is supported in solaris8 and solaris9 containers. For this support, auditing should be enabled in the global zone. Per-zone auditing policy is not supported for solaris8 and solaris9 containers. For more information, see Using Oracle Solaris Auditing in Zones in System Administration Guide: Oracle Solaris Containers-Resource Management and Oracle Solaris Zones.

Limitations

Some functionality available in Solaris 9 is not available inside of zones.

General Non-Global Zone Limitations

The following features cannot be configured in a non-global zone on the Oracle Solaris 10 release:

• Solaris Volume Manager metadevices

• DHCP address assignment in a shared-IP zone

• SSL proxy server

In addition, a non-global zone cannot be an NFS server, and dynamic reconfiguration (DR) operations can only be done from the global zone.

Limitations Specific to solaris9 Branded Zones

The following limitations apply to solaris9 branded zones:

• The CPU performance counter facility described in cpc(3CPC) is not available.

• The following disk and hardware related commands do not work:

  • add_drv(1M)

  • disks(1M)

  • format(1M)

  • fdisk(1M)

  • prtdiag(1M)

  • rem_drv(1M)

The following DTrace providers do not work:

• plockstat

• pid

Using ZFS

Although the zone cannot use a delegated ZFS dataset, the zone can reside on a ZFS file system. You can add a ZFS file system to share with the global zone through the zonecfg fs resource. See Step 7 in How to Configure a solaris9 Branded Zone.

Note that the setfacl and getfacl commands cannot be used with ZFS. When a cpio archive with ACLs set on the files is unpacked, the archive will receive warnings about not being able to set the ACLs, although the files will be unpacked successfully. These commands can be used with UFS.

Adding Components

You can add the following components to a solaris9 branded zone through the zonecfg command:

• You can add additional Solaris file systems to a branded zone by using the fs resource. For examples, see How to Configure the Zone in System Administration Guide: Oracle Solaris Containers-Resource Management and Oracle Solaris Zones.

• Devices can be added to a solaris9 non-global zone by using the device resource. For information about adding devices, see Chapter 18, Planning and Configuring Non-Global Zones (Tasks), in System Administration Guide: Oracle Solaris Containers-Resource Management and Oracle Solaris Zones. To learn more about device considerations in non-global zones, see Device Use in Non-Global Zones in System Administration Guide: Oracle Solaris Containers-Resource Management and Oracle Solaris Zones.

• Privileges can be added to a solaris9 non-global zone by using the limitpriv resource. For information about adding privileges, see Chapter 18, Planning and Configuring Non-Global Zones (Tasks), in System Administration Guide: Oracle Solaris Containers-Resource Management and Oracle Solaris ZonesPrivileges in a Non-Global Zone in System Administration Guide: Oracle Solaris Containers-Resource Management and Oracle Solaris Zones.

• You can specify network configurations. For more information, see Preconfiguration Tasks, Networking in Shared-IP Non-Global Zones in System Administration Guide: Oracle Solaris Containers-Resource Management and Oracle Solaris Zones and Solaris 10 8/07: Networking in Exclusive-IP Non-Global Zones in System Administration Guide: Oracle Solaris Containers-Resource Management and Oracle Solaris Zones

• You can use various resource control features. For more information, see Chapter 17, Non-Global Zone Configuration (Overview), in System Administration Guide: Oracle Solaris Containers-Resource Management and Oracle Solaris Zones, Chapter 18, Planning and Configuring Non-Global Zones (Tasks), in System Administration Guide: Oracle Solaris Containers-Resource Management and Oracle Solaris Zones, and Chapter 27, Solaris Zones Administration (Overview), in System Administration Guide: Oracle Solaris Containers-Resource Management and Oracle Solaris Zones.