About Solaris 8 Branded Zones

A Solaris 8 branded zone (solaris8) is a complete runtime environment for Solaris 8 applications on SPARC machines running the Solaris 10 8/07 Operating System or later. The brand supports the execution of 32-bit and 64-bit Solaris 8 applications.

solaris8 branded zones are based on the whole root zone model. Each zone's file system contains a complete copy of the software that comprises the operating system. However, solaris8 zones are different from native whole root zones in that central patching is not applied.

Solaris 10 Features Available to Zones

Many Solaris 10 capabilities are available to the solaris8 zones, including the following:

• Fault management architecture (FMA) for better system reliability (see smf(5).

• The ability to run on newer hardware that Solaris 8 does not support.

• Solaris 10 performance improvements.

• DTrace, run from the global zone, can be used to examine processes in solaris8 zones.

Limitations

Some functionality available in Solaris 8 is not available inside of Solaris Zones.

General Non-Global Zone Limitations

The following features cannot be configured in a non-global zone:

• Solaris Live Upgrade boot environments

• Solaris Volume Manager metadevices

• DHCP address assignment in a shared-IP zone

• SSL proxy server

In addition, a non-global zone cannot be an NFS server, and dynamic reconfiguration (DR) operations can only be done from the global zone.

Limitations Specific to solaris8 Branded Zones

The following limitations apply to solaris8 branded zones:

• Solaris Auditing and Solaris Basic Security Module Auditing, described in bsmconv(1M) and auditon(2), are not supported. The audit subsystem will always appear to be disabled.

• The CPU performance counter facility described in cpc(3CPC) is not available.

• The following disk and hardware related commands do not work:

  • add_drv(1M)

  • disks(1M)

  • format(1M)

  • fdisk(1M)

  • prtdiag(1M)

  • rem_drv(1M)

Using ZFS

Although the zone cannot use a delegated ZFS dataset, the zone can reside on a ZFS file system. You can add a ZFS file system to share with the global zone through the zonecfg fs resource. See Step 7 in How to Configure a solaris8 Branded Zone.

Note that the setfacl and getfacl commands cannot be used with ZFS. When a cpio or a tar archive with ACLs set on the files is unpacked, the archive will receive warnings about not being able to set the ACLs, although the files will be unpacked successfully. These commands can be used with UFS.

Adding Components

You can add the following components to a solaris8 branded zone through the zonecfg command:

• You can add additional Solaris file systems to a branded zone by using the fs resource. For examples, see How to Configure the Zone in System Administration Guide: Solaris Containers-Resource Management and Solaris Zones.

• Devices can be added to a solaris8 non-global zone by using the device resource. For information about adding devices, see Chapter 18, Planning and Configuring Non-Global Zones (Tasks), in System Administration Guide: Solaris Containers-Resource Management and Solaris Zones. To learn more about device considerations in non-global zones, see Device Use in Non-Global Zones in System Administration Guide: Solaris Containers-Resource Management and Solaris Zones.

• Privileges can be added to a solaris8 non-global zone by using the limitpriv resource. For information about adding privileges, see Chapter 18, Planning and Configuring Non-Global Zones (Tasks), in System Administration Guide: Solaris Containers-Resource Management and Solaris ZonesPrivileges in a Non-Global Zone in System Administration Guide: Solaris Containers-Resource Management and Solaris Zones.

• You can specify network configurations. For more information, see Preconfiguration Tasks, Networking in Shared-IP Non-Global Zones in System Administration Guide: Solaris Containers-Resource Management and Solaris Zones and Solaris 10 8/07: Networking in Exclusive-IP Non-Global Zones in System Administration Guide: Solaris Containers-Resource Management and Solaris Zones

• You can use various resource control features. For more information, see Chapter 17, Non-Global Zone Configuration (Overview), in System Administration Guide: Solaris Containers-Resource Management and Solaris Zones, Chapter 18, Planning and Configuring Non-Global Zones (Tasks), in System Administration Guide: Solaris Containers-Resource Management and Solaris Zones, and Chapter 26, Solaris Zones Administration (Overview), in System Administration Guide: Solaris Containers-Resource Management and Solaris Zones.