Mounting and Updating an Inactive Boot Environment

To update packages on an existing, inactive boot environment, mount that environment first, in order to gain access to it, Then, you can update packages on it.

The command syntax is as follows.

beadm mount BeName mount-point

The command mounts a specified boot environment at a specified mount point. If the mount point already exists, it must be empty. If the directory for the mount point does not exist, the beadm utility creates the directory, then mounts the boot environment on that directory. Although the boot environment is mounted, it remains inactive.

If the specified boot environment is already mounted, the beadm mount command fails and does not remount the boot environment at the newly specified location.

How to Mount and Update a Boot Environment

1. Become an administrator.

   For more information, see How to Use Your Assigned Administrative Rights in Oracle Solaris 11.1 Administration: Security Services.

2. Mount the boot environment.

   # beadm mount BeName mount-point

3. (Optional) Update packages on the boot environment by using the pkg command.

   For example, you can use the pkg install command with the -R option to update specific packages on the boot environment.

   # pkg -R /mnt install package-name

   where /mnt is the mount point for the boot environment.

Unmounting Boot Environments

You can use the beadm command to unmount an existing boot environment. When you unmount a boot environment, the zones in that environment are also unmounted. All mount points are returned to their states prior to being mounted.

The command syntax is as follows.

beadm unmount [-f] BeName

The command unmounts the specified boot environment.

The -f option forcefully unmounts the boot environment even if it is currently busy.