<distribution name="OpenSolaris">

This section provides a default name for the distribution.

You can leave the default name or type a unique name for your distribution.

<checkpoint_enable>

The default setting in this section enables checkpointing when you create the image. You can use checkpointing to pause while building an image for testing purposes. Checkpointing is described later in this topic.

<pkg_repo_default_authority>

This section specifies the location of the IPS repository. The constructor accesses the repository and retrieves packages for the image when the image is being built. The default repository location is http://pkg.opensolaris.org/release.

If you do not want to use the opensolaris.org repository, modify this location to point to the repository of your choice. To view a list of some of the alternate repositories, see OpenSolaris Repositories.

<packages>

This section lists the packages to be included in the image.

If you have packages that you want to add to the image, list your packages in this field, one package per line.

<bootroot_contents>

This section lists the default files and directories that will be included in the boot root for the image that is built. Files or directories that need to be excluded from the image are specified with the base_exclude tag.

Caution - It is recommended that you not edit the boot root contents with the following exception. Modifying the boot root contents might cause the system to fail to boot.

The root archive for x86 images differs from the root archive for SPARC images. The whole root archive, or bootroot, for x86 images is a UFS filesystem, compressed by using lzma. The SPARC platform does not support the compression of the whole root archive in this way. Instead, SPARC root archives use DCFS, which compress each file individually. These individually compressed files might require specific handling in the manifest.

During boot time, some of the files in the root archive need to be modified. But, compressed files cannot be modified. Therefore, for SPARC images, you need to specify in the manifest which files should not be compressed. In the finalizer section of the manifest, find the reference to the boot_archive.py script. By default, this script specifies that all the files and directories in the /boot/solaris/filelist.ramdisk file, and all the files and subdirectories under the usr/kernel directory, are uncompressed. You must specify any additional files that need to be in uncompressed state in the bootroot by setting the fiocompress=false option in the manifest for those files.

<build_area>

This section specifies the area where the image will be created.

You must check that the package image area specified is valid for your system and revise as needed.

If you want to use checkpointing, you must specify a ZFS dataset, or a mount point that correlates to a ZFS dataset, as your build area. If the ZFS dataset does not exist, it will be created. The zpool that you specify, however, must already exist.

If you do not want to use checkpointing, you can use either a regular mount point or a ZFS or UFS file system.

Note - After an image has been created, the build area for that image has the following structure.

• <build_area>/build_data/pkg_image – Package image area.

• <build_area>/build_data/bootroot – Boot root build area.

• <build_area>/build_data/tmp – Temporary directory used by constructor and finalizer scripts.

• <build_area>/media – Area where the output images are placed.

• <build_area>/logs – Area that holds log files which record the steps executed by the application and the output from all commands.

  The “simple” log, named simple-log-YYYY-MM-DD-HH-Mi-SS, contains only errors. The “detail” log, named detail-log-YYYY-MM-DD-HH-Mi-SS, contains informational output and errors. The console echos information in the “simple” log file.

<finalizer>

This section specifies the finalizer scripts that the distribution constructor invokes and the order in which the distribution constructor invokes them.

Default finalizer scripts are provided in the distro_const package and automatically referenced in this section of the manifest file. You do not need to edit this section unless you add new finalizer scripts, or you change the name or the argslist of existing scripts.

<key_value_pairs>

This section specifies additional parameters that are needed by the distribution constructor or by the finalizer scripts. Default parameters are provided.

You do not need to edit the default key-value pairs except to add new ones that will be recognized by new or customized finalizer scripts.