Solaris Express Installation Guide: Solaris Flash Archives (Creation and Installation)
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Solaris Flash Archive Section Descriptions

Each Solaris Flash archive is grouped into sections. Some sections are generated by the Solaris Flash software and need no input from you. Some sections require input or optionally allow you to add information. The following table describes each section.

Table 5-1 Flash Archive Sections

Section Name

Description

Required by Archive?

Requires Input From User?

Archive cookie

The first section contains a cookie that identifies the file as a Solaris Flash archive. The deployment code uses the cookie for identification and validation purposes. The cookie must be present for an archive to be valid.

Yes

No

Archive identification

The second section contains keywords with values that provide identification information about the archive. The software generates some information such as the following:

  • The archive ID number

  • The method of archival:

    • pax

    • cpio

  • The creation date by default

You are required to specify a name for the Solaris Flash archive. Other information that you can specify about the archive includes the following:

  • The author of the archive

  • The date that the archive was created

  • The name of the master system that you used to create the archive

For a list of keywords that describe the archive, see Keywords for the Archive Identification Section.

Yes

Content is generated by both user and the software

Manifest

A section of a Solaris Flash archive that is used to validate a clone system. The manifest section lists the files on a system to be retained, added to, or deleted from the clone system. The installation fails if the files do not match the expected file set. This section is informational only. The section lists the files in an internal format and cannot be used for scripting.

You can exclude this section by creating the differential archive with the flarcreate -M option. Because no validation of the archive occurs, excluding this section is not recommended.

No

No

Predeployment, Postdeployment, Reboot

This section contains internal information that the flash software uses before and after installing an OS image. Any customization scripts that you have provided are stored in this section.

Yes

No

Summary

This section contains messages about the archive creation and records the activities of predeployment scripts.

Yes

Content is generated by both user and the software

User-defined

This section follows the archive-identification section. The archive can contain zero or more user-defined sections. These sections are not processed by the archive extraction code. These sections are retrieved separately and can be used for content descriptions.

No

Yes

Archive files

The archive files section contains the files that have been gathered from the master system in binary data. This section begins with section_begin=archive, but it does not have an ending section boundary.

Yes

No

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