[OpenIndiana-discuss] solaris10 branded zones

[Jim Klimov]

On 2013-02-06 14:30, Jim Klimov wrote:
>    I am currently helping evacuate data/OS from a legacy system
>    Our foreseeable options are to migrate into a new VM:
> 2) into solaris 10u8 "golden image" and possibly updating the
>     OS parts for the local zones in the process (detact/attach -u)

Well, the VMs are dog slow, especially when you extract the vmfs
from the raw disks that used to be a raid array, and read it in
via software, so the process is still ongoing.

For posterity, I'll post a couple of things we go tricked upon:

1) If you need to salvage a VMFS, a bootable LiveCD (including OI)
    with Java and the Open Source Virtual Machine File System (VMFS)
    Driver are the way to go to inspect, extract or publish over
    WebDAV the VMFS image contents: http://code.google.com/p/vmfs
    This was all wrapped into a VirtualBox nicely :)

2) If you use a recent Windows (8, 2008R2) with HyperV enabled,
    but don't really use Hyper-V and want the VirtualBox or some
    other hypervisor to be hardware-assisted, you need to disable
    HyperV from windows boot routine (only one hypervisor may
    use the CPU/chipset extensions at a time, and HyperV grabs
    them first).

    This blog helped:
http://derekgusoff.wordpress.com/2012/09/05/run-hyper-v-and-virtualbox-on-the-same-machine/

    To disable Hyper-V in order to use VirtualBox, open a command
    prompt as administrator and run the command:
          bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype off
    You’ll need to reboot, but then you’ll be all set to run VirtualBox.
    To turn Hyper-V back on, run:
          bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype auto
    and then reboot.

3) The Solaris VM image they had was 10u7, so we imported into
    that for now and would look for upgrades in the future.
    The first zones hit the disk and are ready to "attach -u",
    but reported an error:

# zoneadm -z clamav attach -u
zoneadm: zone 'clamav': ERROR: attempt to downgrade package SUNWzfsu, 
the source had patch 118855-33 which is not installed on this system

   This is a sol10u7 system (with kernel 118855-36) attaching a
   zone detached and exported from sol10u3 (118855-33).

   Googling for ideas, I stumbled upon this blog which salvaged
   the solution from Sun forums: 
http://www.pimp-my-rig.com/2011/08/error-update-attach-solaris-zone.html

   The solution is to append the patch IDs (...) that would
   fail when trying to attach the local zones.
         root at global> echo 121430 >> /usr/lib/brand/native/bad_patches

   While the OP posted on a different kind of errors, this blacklist
   with a single added entry allowed us to pass the compatibility
   checks and get the bootable and working updated zones.

Thanks to all those unknown heroes who made our quest much easier!
And also to those known heroes who lurk around here ;)
//Jim