Oracle Solaris 11 File System Changes

The file systems that are available in the Oracle Solaris 11 release are very similar to the Oracle Solaris 10 file systems.

• Disk-based file systems – HSFS, PCFS, UDFS, UFS, and ZFS

• Network-Based file systems – NFS and SMB

• Virtual file systems – CTFS, FIFOFS, MNTFS, NAMEFS, OBJFS, SHAREFS, SPECFS, and SWAPFS

• Temporary file system (TMPFS)

• Loopback file system (LOFS)

• Process file system (PROCFS)

The general file system differences are as follows:

• CacheFS is not available in the Oracle Solaris 11 release.

• ZFS is the default root file system.

• UFS is a supported legacy file system, but it is not supported as a bootable root file system.

• The legacy Solaris Volume Manager product is supported, but you cannot boot from a Solaris Volume Manager root device.

• ZFS uses a separate ZFS volume for swap and dump devices. UFS can use a single slice for both swap and dump devices.

Root File System Requirements and Changes

The root file system hierarchy is mostly identical to systems running Solaris 10 that have a ZFS root file system. A ZFS root pool contains a ZFS file system with separate directories of system-related components, such as etc, usr, and var, that must be available for the system to function correctly.

• After a system is installed, the root of the Solaris file system is mounted, which means files and directories are accessible.

• All subdirectories of the root file system that are part of the Oracle Solaris OS, with the exception of /var, must be contained in the same file system as the root file system.

• During an Oracle Solaris 11 installation, a separate /var file system is created automatically for a global zone and a non-global zone.

• During an Oracle Solaris 11.1 installation, a rpool/VARSHARE file system is mounted at /var/share. The purpose of this file system is to share file systems across boot environments so that the amount of space that is needed in the /var directory for all BEs is reduced.

  # ls /var/share
  audit  cores  crash  mail

  Symbolic links are automatically created from /var to the /var/share components listed above for compatibility purposes. This file system generally requires no administration except to ensure that /var components do not fill the root file system. If an Oracle Solaris 11 system is updated to Oracle Solaris 11.1, it might take some time to migrate data from the original /var directory to the /var/share directory.

• In addition, all Oracle Solaris OS components must reside in the root pool, with the exception of the swap and dump devices.

• A default swap device and dump device are automatically created as ZFS volumes in the root pool when a system is installed. You cannot use the same volume for both swap and dump devices. In addition, you cannot use swap files in a ZFS root environment. For more information, see Swap and Dump Device Configuration Changes.

Mounting File System Changes

Review the following considerations when mounting file systems on systems running Oracle Solaris 11.

• Similar to Oracle Solaris 10 releases, a ZFS file system is mounted automatically when it is created. No need exists to edit the /etc/vfstab to mount local ZFS file systems.

• If you want to create and mount a local legacy UFS file system to be mounted at boot time, you will need to add an entry to the /etc/vfstab file as in previous Solaris releases.

• If you want to mount a remote file system at boot time, you will need to add an entry to the /etc/vfstab file and start the following service:

  # svcadm enable svc:/network/nfs/client:default

  Otherwise, the file system is not mounted at boot time.