Maintaining the Integrity of the Boot Archives

The boot administration interface, bootadm, enables you to perform the following tasks for maintaining the Oracle Solaris boot archive:

List the files and directories that are included in a system's boot archive.
Manually update the boot archive.

The syntax of the command is as follows:

bootadm [subcommand] [-option] [-R altroot]

For more information about the bootadm command, see the bootadm(1M) man page.

How to Clear a Failed Automatic Boot Archive Update by Using the `auto-reboot-safe` Property

Boot archive recovery on x86 platforms is automated through the Fast Reboot feature. However, during the process of booting the system, if a warning similar to the following is displayed:

WARNING: Reboot required.
The system has updated the cache of files (boot archive) that is used
during the early boot sequence. To avoid booting and running the system
with the previously out-of-sync version of these files, reboot the
system from the same device that was previously booted.

The system then enters system maintenance mode. As a result, the automatic update of the boot archive fails. To correct the problem, follow the steps in this procedure.

Become the root role.
Reboot the system.
```
# reboot
```
If the active BIOS boot device and the GRUB menu entries point to the current boot instance, follow these steps to prevent a boot archive update failure:
1. Set the auto-reboot-safe property of the svc:/system/boot-config SMF service to true, as follows:
```
# svccfg -s svc:/system/boot-config:default setprop config/auto-reboot-safe = true
```
2. Verify that the auto-reboot-safe property is set correctly.
```
# svccfg -s svc:/system/boot-config:default listprop |grep config/auto-reboot-safe
config/auto-reboot-safe            boolean  true
```

How to Clear a Failed Automatic Boot Archive Update by Manually Updating the Boot Archive

During the process of booting the system, if a warning message that is similar to the following is displayed, and as a result, the automatic update of the boot archive fails.

WARNING: Automatic update of the boot archive failed.
Update the archives using 'bootadm update-archive'
command and then reboot the system from the same device that
was previously booted.

The following procedure describes how to manually update an out-of-date boot archive by using the bootadm command.

Note - The same procedure can be used to manually update the boot archive on an x86 based system.

Become the root role.

To update the boot archive, type the following command:

# bootadm update-archive

Note - To update the boot archive on an alternate root, type:

# bootadm update-archive -R /a

-R altroot

Specifies an alternate root path to apply to the update-archive subcommand.

Caution - The root file system of any non-global zone must not be referenced with the -R option. Doing so might damage the global zone's file system, compromise the security of the global zone, or damage the non-global zone's file system. See the zones(5) man page.

Reboot the system.
```
# reboot
```

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