Solaris Flash Archive Section Descriptions

Archive cookie  

The first section contains a cookie that identifies the file as a Solaris Flash archive. The deployment code uses the cookie for identification and validation purposes. The cookie must be present for an archive to be valid.

Yes 

No 

Archive identification  

The second section contains keywords with values that provide identification information about the archive. The software generates some information such as the following:

• The archive ID number

• The method of archival such as cpio

• The creation date by default

You are required to specify a name for the Solaris Flash archive. Other information that you can specify about the archive includes the following: 

• The author of the archive

• The date that the archive was created

• The name of the master system that you used to create the archive

For a list of keywords that describe the archive, see Identification Section Keywords.

Yes 

Content is generated by both user and the software 

Manifest  

A section of a Solaris Flash archive that is used to validate a clone system. The manifest section lists the files on a system to be retained, added to, or deleted from the clone system. The installation fails if the files do not match the expected file set. This section is informational only. The section lists the files in an internal format and cannot be used for scripting.

You can exclude this section by creating the differential archive with the flar create -M option. Because no validation of the archive occurs, excluding this section is not recommended.

No 

No 

Predeployment, Postdeployment, Reboot 

This section contains internal information that the flash software uses before and after installing an OS image. Any customization scripts that you have provided are stored in this section.

Yes 

No 

Summary  

This section contains messages about the archive creation and records the activities of predeployment scripts.

Yes 

Content is generated by both user and the software 

User-defined  

This section follows the archive identification section. The archive can contain zero or more user-defined sections. These sections are not processed by the archive extraction code. These sections are retrieved separately and can be used for content descriptions.

No 

Yes 

Archive files 

The archive files section contains the files that have been gathered from the master system in binary data. This section begins with section_begin=archive, but it does not have an ending section boundary.

Yes 

No