To Create the Solaris Flash Archive

The Solaris Flash installation feature enables you to use a single reference installation of the Solaris OS on a system, which is called the master system. You can then create a Solaris Flash archive, which is a replica image of the master system. You can install the Solaris Flash archive on other systems in the network, creating clone systems.

This section describes how to create a Solaris Flash archive.

Before You Begin

Before you create a Solaris Flash archive, you must first install the master system.

• For information about installing a master system, see Installing the Master System in Solaris 10 Installation Guide: Solaris Flash Archives (Creation and Installation).

• For detailed information about Solaris Flash archives, see Chapter 1, Solaris Flash (Overview), in Solaris 10 Installation Guide: Solaris Flash Archives (Creation and Installation).

Check your web server software documentation to verify that the software can transmit files that are the size of a Solaris Flash archive.

Steps

1. Boot the master system.

   Run the master system in as inactive a state as possible. When possible, run the system in single-user mode. If that is not possible, shut down any applications that you want to archive and any applications that require extensive operating system resources.

2. To create the archive, use the flar create command.

   # flar create -n name [optional-parameters] document-root/flash/filename

   name

   The name that you give the archive. The name you specify is the value of the content_name keyword.

   optional-parameters

   You can use several options to the flar create command to customize your Solaris Flash archive. For detailed descriptions of these options, see Chapter 5, Solaris Flash (Reference), in Solaris 10 Installation Guide: Solaris Flash Archives (Creation and Installation).

   document-root/flash

   The path to the Solaris Flash subdirectory of the install server's document root directory.

   filename

   The name of the archive file.

   To conserve disk space, you might want to use the -c option to the flar create command to compress the archive. However, a compressed archive can affect the performance of your WAN boot installation. For more information about creating a compressed archive, see the man page flarcreate(1M).

   • If the archive creation is successful, the flar create command returns an exit code of 0.

   • If the archive creation fails, the flar create command returns a nonzero exit code.

Example 13–8 Creating a Solaris Flash Archive for a WAN Boot Installation

In this example, you create your Solaris Flash archive by cloning the WAN boot server system with the host name wanserver. The archive is named sol_10_sparc, and is copied exactly from the master system. The archive is an exact duplicate of the master system. The archive is stored in sol_10_sparc.flar. You save the archive in the flash/archives subdirectory of the document root directory on the WAN boot server.

wanserver# flar create -n sol_10_sparc \
/opt/apache/htdocs/flash/archives/sol_10_sparc.flar

Continuing the WAN Boot Installation

After you create the Solaris Flash archive, preconfigure the client information in the sysidcfg file. For instructions, see To Create the sysidcfg File.

See Also

For detailed instructions about how to create a Solaris Flash archive, see Chapter 3, Creating Solaris Flash Archives (Tasks), in Solaris 10 Installation Guide: Solaris Flash Archives (Creation and Installation).

For more information about the flar create command, see the man page flarcreate(1M).