Solaris

Hi all Solaris Experts,

What are the traps and pitfalls in using Solaris zones?

Specifically, what tools, utilities, system calls don't work or work differently in a non-global zone?

I'm new to zones and I've already encountered one difference which is very significant to me:
orphan processes have PPID of 1 in global zone, while in non-global zone, it's the pid of zsched process.

This by itself will prevent one of my systems to be converted into a zone.
I'm wondering what other differences are there.

Is there a document or web site that lists such issues?

Thanks for your help.

There undoubtedly many differences but why didn't you try to fix or workaround the application that expects orphaned process to be reparented by PID 1 instead of giving up ?

Take a look here: General Non-Global Zone Limitations (System Administration Guide: Oracle Solaris 9 Containers)

It's not a question of giving up.

Of course it can be fixed, but, when it's fixed, it becomes a new system, customized for the new environment, i.e. the existing system can not be moved into a non-global zone.

---------- Post updated at 07:31 AM ---------- Previous update was at 07:25 AM ----------

Thanks!

I'm looking for more fine grained info.

I did run the zonep2vchk against my existing systems, and it did point a few things, like priocntl and msgctl; but I'm afraid I might miss more.

If you don't want to adapt your application to the zone specific behavior, I have no doubt there are ways to workaround the issue without touching it.

It is not recomended to use tapes from a zone. For example we use NetBackup to backup out servers and it is recommended that the program run on the global zone. They also recommend not using a zone to connect to tapes.