A stencil file contains a structural definition of a configuration file that is required by an application that is not integrated with SMF, but stores its configuration in SMF. The svcio utility generates the configuration file from the definitions in the stencil file and properties in the SMF service. See the svcio(1) man page for more information about the svcio utility and the smf_stencil(4) man page for information about stencil file format.