Zone Construction

This section applies to initial non-global zone construction, and not to the cloning of existing zones.

The zone is installed using the packages specified by the manifest passed to the zoneadm install -m command. If no manifest is provided, the default manifest uses pkg:/group/system/solaris-small-server. A new zone has the default solaris configuration and logs (SMF repository, /etc, /var), which are only modified by the profile(s) passed to zoneadm install -s, and the networking information specified in any zonecfg add net entries.

The system repository, the zone's configured publishers, and packages kept in sync with the global zone. are discussed in Chapter 24, About Automatic Installation and Packages on an Oracle Solaris 11 System With Zones Installed.

The files needed for the zone's root file system are installed by the system under the zone's root path.

A successfully installed zone is ready for booting and initial login.

Data from the following are not referenced or copied when a zone is installed:

• Non-installed packages

• Data on CDs and DVDs

• Network installation images

In addition, the following types of information that can be present in the global zone are not copied into a zone that is being installed:

• New or changed users in the /etc/passwd file

• New or changed groups in the /etc/group file

• Configurations for networking services such as DHCP address assignment

• Customizations for networking services such as sendmail

• Configurations for network services such as naming services

• New or changed crontab, printer, and mail files

• System log, message, and accounting files

If Oracle Solaris Auditing is used, modifications to files might be required. For more information, see Using Oracle Solaris Auditing in Zones.

The resources specified in the configuration file are added when the zone transitions from installed to ready. A unique zone ID is assigned by the system. File systems are mounted, network interfaces are set up, and devices are configured. Transitioning into the ready state prepares the virtual platform to begin running user processes. In the ready state, the zsched and zoneadmd processes are started to manage the virtual platform.

• zsched, a system scheduling process similar to sched, is used to track kernel resources associated with the zone.

• zoneadmd is the zones administration daemon.

A zone in the ready state does not have any user processes executing in it. The primary difference between a ready zone and a running zone is that at least one process is executing in a running zone. See the init(1M) man page for more information.