Creating the Image for Directly Migrating Oracle Solaris 10 Systems Into Zones

You can use the Oracle Solaris Flash archiving tools to create an image of an installed system that can be migrated into a zone.

The system can be fully configured with all of the software that will be run in the zone before the image is created. This image is then used by the installer when the zone is installed.

How to Use `flarcreate` to Create the Image

On a system with a ZFS root, you can use the flarcreate command described in the flarcreate(1M) Oracle Solaris 10 man page to create the system image. By default, the flar created is a ZFS send stream as described in Sending and Receiving ZFS Data in Oracle Solaris 11.1 Administration: ZFS File Systems.

This example procedure uses NFS to place the flash archive on the target Oracle Solaris 11 system, but you could use any method to move the files.

You must be the global administrator or a user with the required rights profile in the global zone to perform this procedure.

Become root or assume an equivalent role.
Log into the source Oracle Solaris 10 system to be archived.
Change directories to the root directory.
```
# cd /
```
Use flarcreate to create a flash archive image file named s10-system on the source system, and place the archive onto the target Oracle Solaris 11 system:
```
source-system # flarcreate -n s10-system /net/target/export/archives/s10-system.flar
```

How to Use `flarcreate` to Exclude Certain Data

To exclude data that is not on a ZFS dataset boundary from the archive, you must use cpio or pax with flarcreate. You can use the -L archiver option to specify cpio or pax as the method to archive the files.

This example procedure uses NFS to place the flash archive on the target Oracle Solaris 11 system, but you could use any method to move the files.

You must be the global administrator or a user with the required rights profile in the global zone to perform this procedure.

Become root or assume an equivalent role.
Log in to the source Oracle Solaris 10 system to be archived.
Change directories to the root directory.
```
# cd /
```
Use flarcreate to create a flash archive image file named s10-system on the source system, and place the archive onto the target Oracle Solaris 11 system:
```
source-system # flarcreate -S -n s10-system -x /path/to/exclude -L cpio /net/target/export/archives/s10-system.flar
Determining which filesystems will be included in the archive...
Creating the archive...
cpio: File size of "etc/mnttab" has
increased by 435
2068650 blocks
1 error(s)
Archive creation complete.
```
Tip - In some cases, flarcreate can display errors from the cpio command. Most commonly, these are messages such as File size of etc/mnttab has increased by 33. When these messages pertain to log files or files that reflect system state, they can be ignored. Be sure to review all error messages thoroughly.

Other Archive Creation Methods

You can use alternate methods for creating the archive. The installer can accept the following archive formats:

cpio archives
gzip compressed cpio archives
bzip2 compressed cpio archives
pax archives created with the -x xustar (XUSTAR) format
ufsdump level zero (full) backups

Additionally, the installer can only accept a directory of files created by using an archiving utility that saves and restores file permissions, ownership, and links.

For more information, see the cpio(1), pax(1), bzip2(1), gzip(1), and ufsdump(1M) man pages.

Note - If you use a method other than flash archive for creating an archive for P2V, you must unmount the processor-dependent libc.so.1 lofs-mounted hardware capabilities (hwcap) library on the source system before you create the archive. Otherwise, the zone installed with the archive might not boot on the target system. After you have created the archive, you can remount the proper hardware capabilities library on top of /lib/libc.so.1 by using lofs and the mount -O option.

source-system# umount /lib/libc.so.1
source-system# mount -O -F lofs /lib/libc.so.1

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