CREATING A SPARSE ROOT ZONE

Pre-requisite before creating zone :

Plan for, how your zone should and where its path on global zone .

Below are the few required values which require while creating zones.

zonepath : Is the location or path on global zone where the lofs filesystems are located . (I am using here /myzone) .And the zone path should have the permissions 700 as shown below (otherwise zone installation will fail) .

[root@solaris1 /]#ls -ld /myzone drwx------   5 root     root        1024 Aug  3 21:18 /myzone

Inherited-pkg-dir: Are the directories which are loop back mounted from global zone. (/lib,/platform,/sbin and /usr are default dir that are loopback from global zone to local zone ).Further you can add other directories to the list also ... (As it will be shown in this post)

CREATING A SPARSE ROOT ZONE :

In this post I will be creating as sparse root zone under /myzone directory with all default inherited dir and an extra dir (/opt ) . Creating a zone is straight forward with zonecfg command .

For the first time of creting myzone a message appears similar to below . This occurs becuase myzone is not already created and not in any configuration files .

[root@solaris1 /]#zonecfg -z myzone myzone: No such zone configured Use 'create' to begin configuring a new zone. zonecfg:myzone>

Using the zonecfg it will take you to a zone configuration special prompt zonecfg: from where you can configure the zone .

For the first time you need to use the 'create' to start with new zone configuration . Below output shows the initial config of a zone without any customization .

zonecfg:myzone> create zonecfg:myzone> info zonename: myzone zonepath: brand: native autoboot: false bootargs: pool: limitpriv: scheduling-class: ip-type: shared inherit-pkg-dir:         dir: /lib inherit-pkg-dir:         dir: /platform inherit-pkg-dir:         dir: /sbin

Now the very first config value will be zonepath for which I am using /myzone which is already created with 700 permission in global zone . And apart from default inherit-pkg-dir here I am adding one more dir that needs to be lofs mounted in local zone .

zonecfg:myzone> set zonepath=/myzone zonecfg:myzone> zonecfg:myzone> add inherit-pkg-dir zonecfg:myzone:inherit-pkg-dir> set dir=/opt zonecfg:myzone:inherit-pkg-dir> info inherit-pkg-dir:         dir: /opt

Below is the zone configuration after you add extra inherit-pkg-dir and set zonepath.

zonecfg:myzone> info zonename: myzone zonepath: /myzone brand: native autoboot: false bootargs: pool: limitpriv: scheduling-class: ip-type: shared inherit-pkg-dir:         dir: /lib inherit-pkg-dir:         dir: /platform inherit-pkg-dir:         dir: /sbin inherit-pkg-dir:         dir: /usr inherit-pkg-dir:         dir: /opt

Further you can add network info to the zone  with ‘add net’ attributes required are address , which is the IP address assigned to zone and the physical, which is the interface on which a VIP is configured .

zonecfg:myzone> add net zonecfg:myzone:net> info net:         address not specified         physical not specified         defrouter not specified zonecfg:myzone:net> set address=192.168.15.100 zonecfg:myzone:net> set physical=e1000g0 zonecfg:myzone:net> end

Note: before you exit from the zone prompt , save this configuration with ‘commit’ because all the configuration set before commit are not permanently saved .

This completes our configuration of zones and below is the configured zone info . (You can further see the same outside the zone prompt with command  zoneinfo –z info )

zonecfg:myzone> info zonename: myzone zonepath: /myzone brand: native autoboot: false bootargs: pool: limitpriv: scheduling-class: ip-type: shared inherit-pkg-dir:         dir: /lib inherit-pkg-dir:         dir: /platform inherit-pkg-dir:         dir: /sbin inherit-pkg-dir:         dir: /usr inherit-pkg-dir:         dir: /opt net:         address: 192.168.15.100         physical: e1000g0         defrouter not specified zonecfg:myzone> commit zonecfg:myzone> exit

Our zone is now in configured state and is ready to get installed .

[root@solaris1 /]#zoneadm list -cv   ID NAME             STATUS     PATH                           BRAND    IP       0 global           running    /                              native   shared    - myzone           configured /myzone                        native   shared

You can install the zone with zone admin command ‘zoneadm –z install’

[root@solaris1 /]#zoneadm -z myzone install Preparing to install zone . Creating list of files to copy from the global zone. Copying <1969> files to the zone. Initializing zone product registry. Determining zone package initialization order. Preparing to initialize <953> packages on the zone. Initialized <953> packages on zone.                                Zone is initialized. Installation of <2> packages was skipped. The file contains a log of the zone installation.

Yes now we are done with the zone installation without any problems and now the status of zone changes to installed.

[root@solaris1 /]#zoneadm list -cv   ID NAME             STATUS     PATH                           BRAND    IP       0 global           running    /                              native   shared    - myzone           installed  /myzone                        native   shared

No You are ready to boot the zone and you that with zoneadm command as shown below .

[root@solaris1 /]#zoneadm -z myzone boot

As you boot the zone status will be changed to running .

[root@solaris1 /]#zoneadm list -cv   ID NAME             STATUS     PATH                           BRAND    IP       0 global           running    /                              native   shared    1 myzone           running    /myzone                        native   shared

For the first time boot of zone just after installation , you need to login to zone console using zlogin and “-C” options , because there are few details that you need to provide for zone to operate .(Like Language info , timezone and so on . These questions are same as it show up while installing solaris OS .)

[root@solaris1 /]#zlogin -C myzone [Connected to zone 'myzone' console] Reading ZFS config: done. Select a Language   0. English   1. Japanese   2. Korean   3. Simplified Chinese   4. Traditional Chinese Please make a choice (0 - 4), or press h or ? for help: [NOTICE: Zone rebooting]

Above are few messages that appear in the process when you connect to console of zone .  After answering all , zone boots again and now it is complete and stable .

SunOS Release 5.10 Version Generic_137138-09 64-bit Copyright 1983-2008 Sun Microsystems, Inc.  All rights reserved. Use is subject to license terms. Hostname: myzone Reading ZFS config: done. myzone console login: myzone console login: ~.

Note : To exit from zone console session use the key sequence “~.“

And now zone is perfect to use .

Below are few of the outputs after zone installation .

[root@solaris1 /]#zlogin myzone

[Connected to zone 'myzone' pts/2]

Sun Microsystems Inc.   SunOS 5.10      Generic January 2005

# uname -a

SunOS myzone 5.10 Generic_137138-09 i86pc i386 i86pc

# df -h

Filesystem             size   used  avail capacity  Mounted on

/                      1.0G    97M   870M    10%    /

/dev                   1.0G    97M   870M    10%    /dev

/lib                   940M   623M   261M    71%    /lib

/opt                   1.9G   490M   1.4G    27%    /opt

/platform              940M   623M   261M    71%    /platform

/sbin                  940M   623M   261M    71%    /sbin

/usr                   2.9G   2.3G   560M    81%    /usr

proc                     0K     0K     0K     0%    /proc

ctfs                     0K     0K     0K     0%    /system/contract

mnttab                   0K     0K     0K     0%    /etc/mnttab

objfs                    0K     0K     0K     0%    /system/object

swap                   968M   288K   968M     1%    /etc/svc/volatile

/usr/lib/libc/libc_hwcap1.so.1

                       2.9G   2.3G   560M    81%    /lib/libc.so.1

fd                       0K     0K     0K     0%    /dev/fd

swap                   968M     4K   968M     1%    /tmp

swap                   968M    16K   968M     1%    /var/run