Flash Archive - (Project Etude)

The Flash archive documented in this blog can be used to replicate an operating system or part of it, in this case I'm replicating a Solaris 8 OS in order to perform a Solaris 8 Migration into the newest Sun Microsystem sparc server, using the the benefits of Solaris containers (see Project Etude in the next blog)

Steps to follow:

1) Become a super user (root) or an user that have the same privileges, it is recommended to boot the system that you want to replicate in single-user mode, if that option is not possible, you can create the flash archive from multiuser mode, shut down all the application you want to archive and applications that requires extensive operation system resources.

The system must be as inactive as possible.

2) If you want to create an exact replica of a system, use the following command:

Example:
# flarcreate -n system_copy -c /path/system_copy.flar
-n -> Indicates flash archive name.
-c -> Path where the flash archive is going to be storage and the name.flar which is compressed.

Note: If you are creating the flash archive for etude implementation, you may find that some procedures includes another parameter -S, the only difference with this parameter is that skip the disk space check, the creation of a compressed archive in memory before writing the archive to disk, and do not write the archive size data to the archive, which decrease the time of the archive creation.

# flarcreate -S -n system_copy -c /path/system_copy.flar

3) If you want to create a flash archive just replicating a few of the directories, you should create a file where you indicates the directories included or excluded, we recommend if the customer have data in external disks, to exclude those filesystems and restore it later, if the backup had been made already.

Example:
# flarcreate -n system_copy -z file_directories -c /path/system_copy .flar
-n -> Indicates flash archive name.
-z -> Indicates the name of the file where directories or filesystems are included or exclude.
-c -> Path where the flash archive is going to be storage and the name.flar, which is compressed.

The content of the file indicated in the -z option:

Ejemplo:
# vi file_directories
+ /
+ /var
+ /export/home
+ /reports
- /database
- /extra1
- /extra2

Note: This is used to include or exclude file systems as needed, you can customize the flash archive creation.
* the (+) indicates that the filesystem is included
* the (-) indicates that the filesystem is excluded.

As an confirmation of the creation of the flash archive a zero (0) value should be obtain as a result of the process, if the value is different the command execution failed.

Once the flash archive is created, you are going to be capable to review it's structure following the command line:
Example:

# flar info -l system_copy .flar
/....all the directories or filesystems included ....