I'm new to utilizing Solaris... especially the old 8 version, but I'm trying to find out if there is a way to create a Flash Archive of a disk that can be restored on a smaller size disk or disk of varying size?
Yes, you can do that with flarcreate but you'd be better off using ufsdump.
flarcreate is ok though.
---------- Post updated at 11:26 AM ---------- Previous update was at 11:10 AM ----------
Specifically, to be technically correct, you should use "fssnap" to snapshot the filesystem in question. This outputs a special device name for the 'frozen' filesystem. (You don't want files being updated whilst ufsdump is in progress.)
Mount the special device read-only and then ufsdump this mount point.
Don't forget to delete the snapshot at the end (fssnap -d <mount>
This ufsdump (to disk or tape) can then be ufsrestored to a smaller or larger filesystem. Of course, if smaller, there still has to be enough space for all the files being restored.
Hope that helps.
Dennis.
for this task you can use LiveUpgrade too!
show us your disk layout and what do you want to do.