System Administration Guide: Virtualization Using the Solaris Operating System
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Document Information

Preface

Solaris Virtualization Product Overview

Part I Resource Management

1.  Introduction to Solaris Resource Management

2.  Projects and Tasks (Overview)

3.  Administering Projects and Tasks

4.  Extended Accounting (Overview)

5.  Administering Extended Accounting (Tasks)

6.  Resource Controls (Overview)

7.  Administering Resource Controls (Tasks)

8.  Fair Share Scheduler (Overview)

9.  Administering the Fair Share Scheduler (Tasks)

10.  Physical Memory Control Using the Resource Capping Daemon (Overview)

11.  Administering the Resource Capping Daemon (Tasks)

12.  Resource Pools (Overview)

13.  Creating and Administering Resource Pools (Tasks)

14.  Resource Management Configuration Example

15.  Resource Control Functionality in the Solaris Management Console

Part II Zones

16.  Introduction to Solaris Zones

17.  Non-Global Zone Configuration (Overview)

18.  Planning and Configuring Non-Global Zones (Tasks)

19.  About Installing, Halting, Cloning, and Uninstalling Non-Global Zones (Overview)

20.  Installing, Booting, Halting, Uninstalling, and Cloning Non-Global Zones (Tasks)

21.  Non-Global Zone Login (Overview)

22.  Logging In to Non-Global Zones (Tasks)

23.  Moving and Migrating Non-Global Zones (Tasks)

24.  About Packages and Patches on a Solaris System With Zones Installed (Overview)

25.  Adding and Removing Packages and Patches on a Solaris System With Zones Installed (Tasks)

26.  Solaris Zones Administration (Overview)

27.  Administering Solaris Zones (Tasks)

28.  Troubleshooting Miscellaneous Solaris Zones Problems

Part III Branded Zones

29.  About Branded Zones and the Linux Branded Zone

About Using Zones on a Solaris System

Branded Zones Technology

About the lx Brand

Debugging Tools

Commands and Other Interfaces

Setting Up lx Branded Zones on Your System (Task Map)

30.  Planning the lx Branded Zone Configuration (Overview)

31.  Configuring the lx Branded Zone (Tasks)

32.  About Installing, Booting, Halting, Cloning, and Uninstalling lx Branded Zones (Overview)

33.  Installing, Booting, Halting, Uninstalling and Cloning lx Branded Zones (Tasks)

34.  Logging In to lx Branded Zones (Tasks)

35.  Moving and Migrating lx Branded Zones (Tasks)

36.  Administering and Running Applications in lx Branded Zones (Tasks)

Part IV Sun xVM

37.  Sun xVM Hypervisor System Requirements

38.  Booting and Running the Sun xVM Hypervisor

39.  Xvnc

40.  Using virt-install to Install a Domain

41.  xVM System Administration

42.  Troubleshooting Miscellaneous Sun xVM Problems

Glossary

Index

About the lx Brand

The lx brand uses the branded zones framework to enable Linux binary applications to run unmodified on a machine with a Solaris Operating System kernel.

The machine must have one of the following supported i686 processor types:

  • Intel

    • Pentium Pro

    • Pentium II

    • Pentium III

    • Celeron

    • Xeon

    • Pentium 4

    • Pentium M

    • Pentium D

    • Pentium Extreme Edition

    • Core

    • Core 2

    AMD

    • Opteron

    • Athlon XP

    • Athlon 64

    • Athlon 64 X2

    • Athlon FX

    • Duron

    • Sempron

    • Turion 64

    • Turion 64 X2

Supported Linux Distributions

The lx brand includes the tools necessary to install a CentOS 3.x or Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.x distribution inside a non-global zone. Versions 3.5 to 3.8 of each distribution are supported. The brand supports the execution of 32-bit Linux applications on x86 and x64 machines running the Solaris system in either 32-bit or 64-bit mode.

The lx brand emulates the system call interfaces provided by the Linux 2.4.21 kernel, as modified by Red Hat in the RHEL 3.x distributions. This kernel provides the system call interfaces consumed by the glibc version 2.3.2 released by Red Hat.

In addition, the lx brand partially emulates the Linux /dev and /proc interfaces.

Caution - Note that you must maintain a supported configuration if you add packages to an lx branded zone. See About Maintaining a Supported Configuration for more information.

Application Support

The Solaris system imposes no limit on the number of Linux applications you can run in an lx branded zone. Sufficient memory must be available. Also see System and Space Requirements.

Regardless of the underlying kernel, only 32-bit Linux applications are able to run.

The lx zone supports only user-level Linux applications. You cannot use Linux device drivers, Linux kernel modules, or Linux file systems from inside an lx zone.

See http://opensolaris.org/os/community/brandz/applications for a list of some applications that have been successfully run under the lx brand. See How to Install an Application in an lx Branded Zone for an example of installing an application.

You cannot run Solaris applications inside an lx zone. However, the lx zone enables you to use the Solaris system to develop, test, and deploy Linux applications. For example, you can place a Linux application in an lx zone and analyze it using Solaris tools run from the global zone. You can then make improvements and deploy the tuned application on a native Linux system.
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