The Solaris Flash installation feature enables you to use a single reference installation of the Solaris OS on a system, which is called the master system. You can then create a Solaris Flash archive, which is a replica image of the master system. You can install the Solaris Flash archive on other systems in the network, creating clone systems.
This section describes how to create a Solaris Flash archive.
Before you create a Solaris Flash archive, you must first install the master system.
For information about installing a master system, see Installing the Master System in Solaris Express Installation Guide: Solaris Flash Archives (Creation and Installation).
For detailed information about Solaris Flash archives, see Chapter 1, Solaris Flash (Overview), in Solaris Express Installation Guide: Solaris Flash Archives (Creation and Installation).
File Size Issues:
Check your web server software documentation to verify that the software can transmit files that are the size of a Solaris Flash archive.
Check your web server software documentation to verify that the software can transmit files that are the size of a Solaris Flash archive.
The flarcreate command no longer has size limitations on individual files. You can create a Solaris Flash archive that contains individual files over 4 Gbytes.
For more information, see Creating an Archive That Contains Large Files in Solaris Express Installation Guide: Solaris Flash Archives (Creation and Installation).
Boot the master system.
Run the master system in as inactive a state as possible. When possible, run the system in single-user mode. If that is not possible, shut down any applications that you want to archive and any applications that require extensive operating system resources.
To create the archive, use the flarcreate command.
# flarcreate -n name [optional-parameters] document-root/flash/filename |
The name that you give the archive. The name you specify is the value of the content_name keyword.
You can use several options to the flarcreate command to customize your Solaris Flash archive. For detailed descriptions of these options, see Chapter 5, Solaris Flash (Reference), in Solaris Express Installation Guide: Solaris Flash Archives (Creation and Installation).
The path to the Solaris Flash subdirectory of the install server's document root directory.
The name of the archive file.
To conserve disk space, you might want to use the -c option to the flarcreate command to compress the archive. However, a compressed archive can affect the performance of your WAN boot installation. For more information about creating a compressed archive, see the man page flarcreate(1M).
If the archive creation is successful, the flarcreate command returns an exit code of 0.
If the archive creation fails, the flarcreate command returns a nonzero exit code.
In this example, you create your Solaris Flash archive by cloning the WAN boot server system with the host name wanserver. The archive is named sol_10_sparc, and is copied exactly from the master system. The archive is an exact duplicate of the master system. The archive is stored in sol_10_sparc.flar. You save the archive in the flash/archives subdirectory of the document root directory on the WAN boot server.
wanserver# flarcreate -n sol_10_sparc \ /opt/apache/htdocs/flash/archives/sol_10_sparc.flar |
After you create the Solaris Flash archive, preconfigure the client information in the sysidcfg file. For instructions, see To Create the sysidcfg File.
For detailed instructions about how to create a Solaris Flash archive, see Chapter 3, Creating Solaris Flash Archives (Tasks), in Solaris Express Installation Guide: Solaris Flash Archives (Creation and Installation).
For more information about the flarcreate command, see the man page flarcreate(1M).