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System Administration Guide: Basic Administration Oracle Solaris 11 Express 11/10 |
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System Administration Guide: Basic Administration Oracle Solaris 11 Express 11/10 |
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)
Overview of the SPARC Boot Architecture
Support for Booting Multiple Kernels
Implementation of the Boot Archives on SPARC
x86: Overview of the GRUB Bootloader
x86: Support for the findroot Command
x86: Fast Reboot Feature Enhancements
Booting From an Oracle Solaris ZFS Root File System
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)
10. x86: GRUB Based Booting (Reference)
Note - The information in this section applies to both the SPARC and x86 platforms.
The fundamental Oracle Solaris boot design includes the following characteristics:
Use of a boot archive
The boot archive is a ramdisk image that contains all of the files that are required for booting a system. For more information, see Implementation of the Boot Archives on SPARC.
Use of the bootadm command to manage the Oracle Solaris boot archives
The bootadm command handles the details of boot archive update and verification on both the SPARC and x86 platform automatically. During an installation or upgrade, the bootadm command creates an initial boot archive. During the process of a normal system shutdown, the shutdown process compares the boot archive's contents with the root file system. If there are any inconsistencies, the system rebuilds the boot archive to ensure that upon reboot, the boot archive and root file system are synchronized. You can use the bootadm command to manually update the boot archives. See Using the bootadm Command to Manage the Boot Archives.
Note - Some options of the bootadm command cannot be used on the SPARC platform.
For more information, see the bootadm(1M) and boot(1M) man pages.
Use of a ramdisk image as the root file system during installation
This process is the same on the SPARC and x86 platforms. The ramdisk image is derived from the boot archive and then transferred to the system from the boot device.
Note - On the SPARC platform, the OpenBoot PROM continues to be used to access the boot device and to transfer the boot archive to the system's memory. Conversely, on the x86 platform, the system is initially controlled by the BIOS. The BIOS is used to initiate a transfer of the boot archive from a network device or to run a boot loader. In the Oracle Solaris OS, the x86 boot loader that is used to transfer the boot archive from disk is GRUB. See x86: Boot Processes.
In the case of a software installation, the ramdisk image is the root file system that is used for the entire installation process. Using the ramdisk image for this purpose eliminates the need to boot the system from removable media. The ramdisk file system type can be a High Sierra File System (HSFS).
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