If Solaris auditing is used, modifications to auditing files copied from the global zone might be required. For more information, see Using Solaris Auditing in Zones.

The following features cannot be configured in a non-global zone:

• Solaris Live Upgrade™ boot environments

• Solaris Volume Manager metadevices

• DHCP address assignment

• SSL proxy server

The resources specified in the configuration file are added when the zone transitions from installed to ready. A unique zone ID is assigned by the system. File systems are mounted, network interfaces are plumbed, and devices are configured. Transitioning into the ready state prepares the virtual platform to begin running user processes. In the ready state, the zsched and zoneadmd processes are started to manage the virtual platform.

• zsched, a system scheduling process similar to sched, is used to track kernel resources associated with the zone.

• zoneadmd is the zones administration daemon.

A zone in the ready state does not have any user processes executing in it. The primary difference between a ready zone and a running zone is that at least one process is executing in a running zone. See the init(1M) man page for more information.

The zoneadmd Daemon

The zones administration daemon, zoneadmd, is the primary process for managing the zone's virtual platform. The daemon is also responsible for managing zone booting and shutting down. There is one zoneadmd process running for each active (ready, running, or shutting down) zone on the system.

The zoneadmd daemon sets up the zone as specified in the zone configuration. This process includes the following actions:

• Allocating the zone ID and starting the zsched system process

• Setting zone-wide resource controls

• Preparing the zone's devices as specified in the zone configuration

• Plumbing virtual network interfaces

• Mounting loopback and conventional file systems

• Instantiating and initializing the zone console device

Unless the zoneadmd daemon is already running, it is automatically started by zoneadm. Thus, if the daemon is not running for any reason, any invocation of zoneadm to administer the zone will restart zoneadmd.

The man page for the zoneadmd daemon is zoneadmd(1M).

The zsched Zone Scheduler

An active zone is a zone that is in the ready state, the running state, or the shutting down state. Every active zone has an associated kernel process, zsched. Kernel threads doing work on behalf of the zone are owned by zsched. The zsched process enables the zones subsystem to keep track of per-zone kernel threads.

Zone Application Environment

The zoneadm command is used to create the zone application environment.

After a non-global zone is booted for the first time, the internal configuration of the zone must be created. The internal configuration specifies a naming service to use, the default locale and time zone, the zone's root password, and other aspects of the application environment. For more information, see Internal Zone Configuration and Performing the Initial Internal Zone Configuration. Note that the default locale and time zone for a zone can be configured independently of the global settings.

About Halting, Rebooting, Uninstalling, and Cloning Zones

This section provides an overview of the procedures for halting, rebooting, uninstalling, and cloning zones.

Halting a Zone

The zoneadm halt command is used to remove both the application environment and the virtual platform for a zone. The zone is then brought back to the installed state. All processes are killed, devices are unconfigured, network interfaces are unplumbed, file systems are unmounted, and the kernel data structures are destroyed.

The halt command does not run any shutdown scripts within the zone. To shut down a zone, see How to Use zlogin to Shut Down a Zone.

If the halt operation fails, see Zone Does Not Halt.

Rebooting a Zone

The zoneadm reboot command is used to reboot a zone. The zone is halted and then booted again. The zone ID will change when the zone is rebooted.

Zone Boot Arguments

Zones support the following boot arguments used with the zoneadm boot and reboot commands:

• -i altinit

• -m smf_options

• -s

The following definitions apply:

-i altinit	Selects an alternative executable to be the first process. altinit must be a valid path to an executable. The default first process is described in init(1M).
-m smf_options	Controls the boot behavior of SMF. There are two categories of options, recovery options and messages options. Message options determine the type and number of messages that displays during boot. Service options determine the services that are used to boot the system. Recovery options include the following: debug Prints standard per-service output and all svc.startd messages to log. milestone=milestone Boot to the subgraph defined by the given milestone. Legitimate milestones are none, single-user, multi-user, multi-user-server, and all. Message options include the following: quiet Prints standard per-service output and error messages requiring administrative intervention verbose Prints standard per-service output and messages providing more information.
-s	Boots only to milestone svc:/milestone/single-user:default. This milestone is equivalent to init level s.

For usage examples, see How to Boot a Zone and How to Boot a Zone in Single-User Mode.

For information on the Solaris service management facility (SMF) and init , see Chapter 14, "Managing Services (Overview)," in System Administration Guide: Basic Administration, svc.startd(1M) and init(1M).