How does solaris boot

When you use the pkg install or pkg update command, use the —require-backup-be , —backup-be-name , —be-name , or —require-new-be option to make the changes in a new boot environment, not in the current boot environment. After the initial installation of Oracle Solaris 11 onto a system, a BE is created. Use the beadm utility or the pkg command to administer additional BEs on your system. The beadm utility is the primary BE management tool.

The beadm utility aggregates all datasets in a BE and performs actions on the entire BE at once. The kernel phase is the final stage of the boot process. During this phase, Oracle Solaris is initialized and a minimal root file system is mounted on the ramdisk that was constructed from the boot archive. In some environments, such as an installation, the ramdisk is used as the root file system and remains mounted.

The ramdisk contains a set of kernel files and drivers that is sufficient to mount the root file system on the specified root device. The kernel then extracts the remaining primary modules from the boot archive, initializes itself, mounts the real root file system, then discards the boot archive. Search Scope:. Document Information Preface 1. Overview of the Oracle Solaris Boot Architecture The Oracle Solaris SPARC boot architecture includes the following fundamental characteristics: Use of a boot archive The boot archive is a ramdisk image that contains all of the files that are required for booting a system.

Use of a boot administrative interface to maintain the integrity of the Oracle Solaris boot archives The bootadm command handles the details of boot archive update and verification. All rights reserved. Typically they are used to update Solaris systems most of the work is done by IPS behind the scenes, but you can learn the mechanics of the process in the IPS Lab.

You can have as many Boot Environments as you want and keep different system configurations in them. By default, every time you update Solaris OS, a new boot environment is created you can specify its name. Task: You want to make updates to your system, but you want to be able to return back to the previous state. Lab: We will use a Solaris 11 feature called Boot Environments. We'll create an extra boot environment as a backup think saving your state in a shooting game.

Then we'll make some fatal mistakes which make our system unbootable. After we failed to boot our default boot environment, we'll boot into the backup BE. The only command you want to know to work with Boot Environments is beadm 1M. A system can be in only one run level at a time. Oracle Solaris has eight run levels, which are described in the following table.

See Accelerating the Reboot Process. In addition, the svcadm command can be used to change the run level of a system, by selecting a milestone at which to run. The following table shows which run level corresponds to each milestone. Executes any process entries that have sysinit in the action field so that any special initializations can take place before users log in to the system.

For a detailed description of how the init process uses the inittab file, see the init 1M man page. In general, changing milestones or run levels is an uncommon procedure. If it is necessary, using the init command to change to a run level will change the milestone as well and is the appropriate command to use. The init command is also good for shutting down a system.

However, booting a system using the none milestone can be very useful for debugging startup problems. There is no equivalent run level to the none milestone. To determine a system's current run level, use the who -r command. The output of the who -r command displays information about a system's current run level, as well as previous run levels. Use this procedure to boot a system that is currently at run level 0 to run level 3.