Solaris Flash (Reference)

Archive cookie

The first section contains a cookie that identifies the file as a Solaris Flash archive. The deployment code uses the cookie for identification and validation purposes. The cookie must be present for an archive to be valid.

Yes

No

Archive identification

The second section contains keywords with values that provide identification information about the archive. The software generates some information such as the following:

• The archive ID number

• The method of archival such as cpio

• The creation date by default

You are required to specify a name for the Solaris Flash archive. Other information that you can specify about the archive includes:

• The author of the archive

• The date that the archive was created

• The name of the master system that you used to create the archive

For a list of keywords that describe the archive, see Identification Section Keywords.

Yes

Content is generated by both user and the software

Manifest

A section of a Solaris Flash archive that is used to validate a clone system. The manifest section lists the files on a system to be retained, added to, or deleted from the clone system. The installation fails if the files do not match the expected file set. This section is informational only. The section lists the files in an internal format and cannot be used for scripting.

You can exclude this section by creating the differential archive with the flar create -M option. Because no validation of the archive occurs, excluding this section is not recommended.

No

No

• Predeployment

• Postdeployment

• Reboot

This section contains internal information that the flash software uses before and after installing an operating environment image. Any customization scripts that you have provided are stored in this section.

Yes

No

Summary

This section contains messages about the archive creation and records the activities of predeployment scripts.

Yes

Content is generated by both user and the software

User-defined

This section follows the identification section. The archive can contain zero or more user-defined sections. These sections are not processed by the archive extraction code. These sections are retrieved separately and can be used for content descriptions.

No

Yes

Archive files

The archive files section contains the files that have been gathered from the master system in binary data. This section begins with section_begin=archive, but it does not have an ending section boundary.

Yes

No

Archive cookie

cookie -- This section is not delimited by the section_begin and section_end keywords.

Archive identification

identification

User-defined sections

section_name An example of a section_name keyword is X-user_section_1.

Archive files

archive

section_begin

section_end

These keywords are used to delimit sections in the archive and are not limited exclusively to the identification section. For a description of these keywords, see General Keywords.

Text

Yes

archive_id (optional)

This keyword uniquely describes the contents of the archive. This value is used by the installation software only to validate the contents of the archive during archive installation. If the keyword is not present, no integrity check is performed.

For example, the archive_id keyword might be FlAsH-ARcHive-2.0.

Text

No

files_archived_method

This keyword describes the archive method that is used in the files section.

• If the keyword is present, it has the value of cpio.

• If this keyword is not present, the files section is assumed to be in CPIO format with ASCII headers. This format is the cpio -c option.

If the files_compressed_method is present, the compression method is applied to the archive file that is created by the archive method.

Text

No

files_archived_size

This keyword value is the size of the archived files section in bytes.

Numeric

No

files_compress_method

This keyword describes the compression algorithm that is used on the files section.

• If the keyword is present, it can have one of the following values.

  • none - The archive file section is not compressed

  • compress - The file section is compressed by using the compress command

• If this keyword is not present, the archive files section is assumed to be uncompressed.

The compression method indicated by this keyword is applied to the archive file created by the archive method indicated by the files_archived_method keyword.

Text

No

files_unarchived_size

This keyword defines the cumulative size in bytes of the extracted archive. The value is used for file-system size verification.

Numeric

No

creation_date

This keyword value is a textual timestamp that represents the time that you created the archive.

• You can use flar create command with the -i option to create the date.

• If you do not specify a creation date with the flar create command, the default date is set in Greenwich mean time (GMT).

• The value must be in ISO-8601 complete basic calendar format without the time designator (ISO-8601,§5.4.1(a)). The format is CCYYMMDDhhmmss. For example, 20000131221409 represents January 31st, 2000 10:14:09 p.m.

Text

No

creation_master

This keyword value is the name of the master system you used to create the archive. You can use the flar create -m option to create this value. If you do not specify a value, the value is taken from the uname -n command.

Text

No

content_name

This keyword identifies the archive. The value is generated from the flar create -n option. Follow these guidelines when you create this value:

• The descriptive name can be no longer than 256 characters.

• The description should contain the function and purpose of the archive.

Text

Yes

content_type

This keyword value specifies a category for the archive. You use the flar create -T option to generate the value.

Text

No

content_description

The keyword value describes the contents of the archive. The value of this keyword has no length limit. You use the flar create -E option to create this value.

Text

No

content_author

This keyword value identifies the creator of the archive. You use the flar create-a option to create this value. Suggested values include the full name of the creator and the creator's email address.

Text

No

content_architectures

This keyword value is a comma-separated list of the kernel architectures that the archive supports.

• If the keyword is present, the installation software validates the kernel architecture of the clone system against the list of architectures that the archive supports. The installation fails if the archive does not support the kernel architecture of the clone system.

• If the keyword is not present, the installation software does not validate the architecture of the clone system.

Text list

No

creation_node

The return from uname -n

creation_hardware_class

The return from uname -m

creation_platform

The return from uname -i

creation_processor

The return from uname -p

creation_release

The return fromuname -r

creation_os_name

The return from uname -s

creation_os_version

The return from uname -v