I am working on building Solaris 11.3 system going to install it with SPARC 11.3 text iso then update system with 11.3 local IPS repo. Once that is all done my question is can I install non global zones on the system that are 11.0, 11.1, 11.2 and if so what is the best way to go about this? I can't seem to find any reasonable info or documentation. My guess is to copy over 11.0 IPS repo and activate it then try to install zone from that but if anyone has some solid advise that would be great.
I'd rather install Solaris 11.0 create a 11.0 zone then detach it, update to 11.1, create a 11.1 zone then detach it, update to 11.2, create/detach a 11.2 zone, update to 11.3, create a 11.3 zone and finally attach the three previously detached zones without updating them.
Alternatively, kernel zones can be used to install 11.2 and newer updates, and ldoms can install whatever Solaris release the hardware support.
with regards to creating a zone at a particular SRU level. You can easily do this with pkg update by updating your repo to the most current level then specifying the specific SRU you want to use I.E.
OK I don't think I am explaining this correct. I have a Solaris 11.3 system fully patched. I need to create 11.0, 11.1 and 11.2 zones on the Global zone which is 11.3. I have 11.0 11.1 and 11.2 IPS repo's available on the system. When I try to create a new zone with the 11.0 IPS repo set in pkg publisher the zone install fails with this message:
Failed Checkpoints:
Checkpoint execution error:
The following pattern\(s\) did not match any allowable packages. Try
using a different matching pattern, or refreshing publisher information:
Installation: Failed. See install log at /system/volatile/install.24386/install_log
ERROR: auto-install failed.
I have already refreshed the publisher information to no avail.
I don't understand that if I have the 11.0 repo set in pkg publisher on the global zone why I can't install an 11.0 zone on the global zone??
From my experience, when moving a zone from a global zone of a lesser patch level to a global zone of a higher patch level part of the process of attaching the zone is to bring the patch level up to that of the server. I.E. the zones are required to be at the level of the global zone.
another interesting corollary is that you can't do the opposite. I.E. you can't take a zone from a GZ of a higher patch level to the GZ of a lower patch level. It will fail to attach and give you a non-sensical error message.
So knowing all that, I would imagine that trying to install an 11.0 zone to an 11.3 GZ probably won't work.
os2mac is correct. For solaris 10 - you can create solaris 10 branded zones on a solaris 11 global zone. Not so with versions of 11, AFAIK.
If you truly need one machine to run 11.1, 11.2 and so on you can only do that using something like virtualbox. This allows completely separate versions of solaris to run on one machine.
1) Trying to restrict the repository won't help, you cannot create a non global zone with a lower version than the one of the global zone, the reason why I told you to start with a Solaris 11 FCS global zone.
2) All non global zones are both whole root and branded under Solaris 11, unlike with Solaris 10.
3) When importing a zone created with an older Solaris 11 update, some (but not all) packages are required to be in sync with the global zone to be attached, so the non global zone won't stay strictly identical to what it used to be.
To update this set of packages, the '-u' option is used, To update all packages, the '-U' one is available.
I agree hypervisor based virtualisation is required if a strictly 11.0 or 11.1 environment is expected but for 11.2, 11.3, 11.4 and newer, I would recommend kernel zones (vs VirtualBox or Ldoms).
