Listing Existing Boot Environments and Snapshots

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You can display information about snapshots, boot environments, and datasets that were created by the beadm command by using the beadm list command. The beadm list command output also displays boot environments that are created by the pkg command.

To view information for a specific boot environment, include a boot environment name on the command line. If a specific boot environment is not specified, the command lists information about all boot environments. The default is to list boot environments without additional information.

The following options are available:

–a – Lists all available information about the boot environment. This information includes subordinate datasets and snapshots.
–d – Lists information about all subordinate datasets that belong to the boot environment.
–s – Lists information about the snapshots of the boot environment.
–H – Lists information in machine-parseable format. Each field in the output is separated by a semicolon.

Viewing Information About Boot Environments

The –a option shows full information for a specified boot environment or for all boot environments, including all dataset and snapshot information. This information includes flags to indicate whether the boot environment is active or not, the mountpoint for the dataset, the amount of space used by the dataset, the policy and the date the dataset was created.

The values for the Active column are as follows:

R – Active on reboot
N – Active now
O – Orphaned non-global zone boot environment, only visible inside a non-global zone
NR – Active now and active on reboot
- – Inactive
! – Unbootable boot environments in a non-global zone

The following example displays full information for the BE5 boot environment.

# beadm list -a BE5
BE/Dataset/Snapshot    Active Mountpoint Space   Policy Created
-------------------    ------ ---------- -----   ------ -------
BE5
   p/ROOT/BE5          NR     /          6.10G   static 2013-09-09 16:53
   p/ROOT/BE5/var      -      /var       24.55M  static 2013-09-09 16:53
   p/ROOT/BE5/var@boo  -      -          18.38M  static 2013-09-10 00:59
   p/ROOT/BE5/var@foo  -      -          18.38M  static 2013-06-10 16:37
   p/ROOT/BE5@boo      -      -          139.44M static 2013-09-10 00:59
   p/ROOT/BE5@foo      -      -          912.85M static 2013-06-10 16:37

For more information about orphaned boot environments see About Orphaned Zone Boot Environments in Creating and Using Oracle Solaris Zones.

Viewing Information About Boot Environments in Machine-Parsable Output

The –H option suppresses header titles and displays results separated by semicolons. The following example shows information for all boot environments.

# beadm list -H
BE2;4659d6ee-76a0-c90f-e2e9-a3fcb570ccd5;;;55296;static;1211397974
BE3;ff748564-096c-449a-87e4-8679221d37b5;;;339968;static;1219771706
BE4;1efe3365-02c5-6064-82f5-a530148b3734;;;16541696;static;1220664051
BE5;215b8387-4968-627c-d2d0-f4a011414bab;NR;/;7786206208;static;1221004384

Each field in the output is separated by a semicolon. The output fields, in display order, are as follows.

Table 1 Output Fields for beadm list–H

Field	Description
1	BE name
2	UUID
3	Active
4	Mountpoint
5	Space; size in bytes
6	Policy
7	Creation time (in seconds since 00:00:00 UTC, Jan 1, 1970)

Each field is separated by a semicolon. In this example, a boot environment was not specified in the command, so all boot environments are displayed. Because no other options were used with the command, the universally unique identifier (UUID) for the boot environment is provided in the second field. In this example, the UUID for BE5 is 215b8387-4968-627c-d2d0-f4a011414bab. For a boot environment in a non-global zone, the UUID field represents the parent ID with which that boot environment is associated.

Viewing Snapshot Specifications

The –s option displays information for any snapshots that exist.

In the following sample output, each snapshot title includes a timestamp indicating when that snapshot was taken.

# beadm list -s test-2
BE/Snapshot                   Space   Policy Created
-----------                   -----   ------ ------- 
test-2
   test-2@2013-04-12-22:29:27 264.02M static 2013-04-12 16:29
   test-2@2013-06-02-20:28:51 32.50M  static 2013-06-02 14:28
   test-2@2013-06-03-16:51:01 16.66M  static 2013-06-03 10:51
   test-2@2013-07-13-22:01:56 25.93M  static 2013-07-13 16:01
   test-2@2013-07-21-17:15:15 26.00M  static 2013-07-21 11:15
   test-2@2013-07-25-19:07:03 13.75M  static 2013-07-25 13:07
   test-2@2013-07-25-20:33:41 12.32M  static 2013-07-25 14:33
   test-2@2013-07-25-20:41:23 30.60M  static 2013-07-25 14:41
   test-2@2013-08-06-15:53:15 8.92M   static 2013-08-06 09:53
   test-2@2013-08-06-16:00:37 8.92M   static 2013-08-06 10:00
   test-2@2013-08-09-16:06:11 193.72M static 2013-08-09 10:06
   test-2@2013-08-09-20:28:59 102.69M static 2013-08-09 14:28
   test-2@install             205.10M static 2013-03-16 19:04