Booting From a ZFS Boot Environment or Root File System on x86 Platforms

The following entries are added to the /pool-name/boot/grub/menu.lst file during the installation process or during the beadm activate operation to boot ZFS automatically:

title 2010-12-10-be-s
findroot (pool_rpool,0,a)
bootfs rpool/ROOT/2010-12-10-be_152
kernel$ /platform/i86pc/kernel/$ISADIR/unix -B $ZFS-BOOTFS -s
module$ /platform/i86pc/$ISADIR/boot_archive

If the device that is identified by GRUB as the boot device contains a ZFS storage pool, the menu.lst file is used to create the GRUB menu. On an x86 based system with multiple ZFS boot environments, you can select a boot environment from the GRUB menu during boot time. If the root file system that corresponds to this menu entry is a ZFS dataset, the following option is added:

-B $ZFS-BOOTFS

The $ZFS-BOOTFS keyword enables you to boot from an Oracle Solaris ZFS root file system on an x86 based system. This option identifies which boot environment or dataset to boot. If you install an Oracle Solaris release that supports a ZFS boot loader, the GRUB menu.lst file, as well as the GRUB boot menu, contains this information by default.

Example 7-3 Booting From a ZFS boot environment, Dataset, or File System

When booting from a ZFS file system, the root device is specified by the -B $ZFS-BOOTFS boot parameter on the kernel$ line in the GRUB menu. This value, similar to all parameters specified by the -B option, is passed from GRUB to the kernel. For example:

title Oracle Solaris 11 Express snv_152
findroot (pool_rpool,0,a)
bootfs rpool/ROOT/solaris
kernel$ /platform/i86pc/kernel/$ISADIR/unix -B $ZFS-BOOTFS
module$ /platform/i86pc/$ISADIR/boot_archive