Solaris zones notes

Subject:      Solaris 10 - Zones - HOW-TO
From:         "fundu_gang" <deepak.cutinha at gmail dot com>
Newsgroups:   comp.unix.solaris
Date:         9 Mar 2005 02:32:08 -0800

Hi All,

I thought I should like to share this with all of you ..

An exciting feature of Solaris 10 are Zones...

In simple words a zone means of partitioning a single
Solaris instance into isolated application environments called "zones."
Each zone can be separately administered and each zone can run an
independent set of applications.

Zones allow one or more processes to run in isolation from other
activity on the system.  Processes running in a given zone cannot
monitor or affect processes running in other zones.  For example, a
process running in a zone will only be able to send signals to other
processes in the same zone, regardless of user id and other credential
information.

After going through the documentation and with some success I was able
to create my first zone on our Solaris 10.

I have listed the steps involved if you are interested to have a look.

root@merenge # zoneadm list -cv
  ID NAME             STATUS         PATH
   0 global           running        /
root@merenge # zonecfg -z deepak
deepak: No such zone configured
Use 'create' to begin configuring a new zone.
zonecfg:deepak> create
zonecfg:deepak> set zonepath=/deepak
zonecfg:deepak> set autoboot=true
zonecfg:deepak> add inherit-pkg-dir
zonecfg:deepak:inherit-pkg-dir> set dir=/opt
zonecfg:deepak:inherit-pkg-dir> end
zonecfg:deepak> add net
zonecfg:deepak:net> set address=10.10.1.22
zonecfg:deepak:net> set physical=eri0
zonecfg:deepak:net> end
zonecfg:deepak> verify
zonecfg:deepak> commit
zonecfg:deepak>

root@merenge # zoneadm list -cv
  ID NAME             STATUS         PATH
   0 global           running        /
   - deepak           configured     /deepak
root@merenge # zoneadm -z deepak install
Preparing to install zone <deepak>.
Creating list of files to copy from the global zone.
Copying <2432> files to the zone.
Initializing zone product registry.
Determining zone package initialization order.
Preparing to initialize <905> packages on the zone.
Initialized <905> packages on zone.
Zone <deepak> is initialized.
Installation of <1> packages was skipped.
Installation of these packages generated warnings: <SUNWcsr>
The file </deepak/root/var/sadm/system/logs/install_log> contains a log
of the zone installation.

root@merenge # zoneadm -z deepak boot
root@merenge # zoneadm list -cv
  ID NAME             STATUS         PATH
   0 global           running        /
   1 deepak           running        /deepak
root@merenge # zlogin -C deepak

[NOTICE: Zone rebooting]

SunOS Release 5.10 Version Generic 64-bit
Copyright 1983-2005 Sun Microsystems, Inc.  All rights reserved.
Use is subject to license terms.
Hostname: deepak

deepak console login:

This completes the creation of a zone and can be used as an individual
virtual OS inside my Solaris 10 box called merenge.

Interesting stuff...

Best Regards,

Deepak Cutinha

Thanks, see also Dennis Clarke's review from about a year ago

http://www.blastwave.org/docs/Solaris-10-b51/DMC-0002/dmc-0002.html

Also, see James Dickens' blog.  http://uadmin.blogspot.com; I think
he's added some things that Dennis didn't think of -- 
add-inherit-pkg-dir, for example.