SMF Goal Services and Zones

A goal service defines the set of services that must be running for the zone to function as intended. The goal service notifies you if any of these services are not running at system start.

The milestone/goals goal service provides a clear, unambiguous, and well-defined point where a system can be considered up and running. The dependencies of milestone/goals should be configured to represent the mission critical services for the system. The default dependency of milestone/goals is: svc:/milestone/multi-user-server:default.

System administrators can use goal services to define the expected set of services that should be running when a system is up and functioning for its intended purpose. Goals services are administered by using the goals svcadm subcommand.

Goal services are expected to have all their dependencies satisfiable without intervention. If administrative intervention is required to have a dependency satisfied, the goal service will be placed in the maintenance state. Goal services that are in the maintenance state will automatically leave that state once their dependencies are satisfied.

In general, the goal service setting should not be used for services that perform actual work.

A service is set to behave as a goal service when the property general/goal-service= property is set to true.

Goal services should not depend on dynamically enabled services. Having dynamically enabled services will cause a goal service to enter the maintenance state until the dependency is enabled by another service. You can use svcadm subcommand goals to set the dependencies of goal services.