Quite some time ago, someone posted the question "Does Networker support
Solaris 10 containers?"

I haven't seen a response on this but thought I'd let you all know my
experience so far with Solaris 10 containers and Networker.

First off, Legato has formally told me that containers are not currently
supported and have created an RFE for us. I've no word on the status of
the RFE.

We have a need to get not just the Networker Client but also the
Networker Module for Oracle working with containers. The powers at be
here have bought one large Sun box of which they want to run 4
containers with Oracle DB's in 2 of the containers (Development and
Production).  Putting the Networker Module for Oracle aside for the
moment, I have started playing with the Networker Client SW v7.2.1 on
this new Sun box.

Installation of the Client SW is a little messy as /usr is only r/w in
the global zone. In all of the containers, /usr is Read-only. So using
all the defaults for the install of the client, I had to do the
following:
- install the client in the global zone. This works as expected and it
can see the whole box and backs up and restores file systems as
expected. Defining the saveset of All does find all mounted file
systems.

- Installation of the client SW on a container is a bit messy. The
container can already see the Networker Client binaries and libraries
etc installed in /usr but is missing /nsr as the container has a
seperate root filesystem. It's also missing the start up script
/etc/init.d/networker. These must be copied from the global zone and
since the global zone can see everything on the box it must be done from
the global zone. 
cp /nsr /export/zones/<zone name>/root
cp /etc/init.d/networker /export/zones/<zone name>/root/etc/init.d
Now in the container you can start the client
/etc/init.d/networker start

Now you can backup the container but can not do so by using the saveset
All. If you do, all you will get is one small file called
/system/contract
Not very useful. However, if you define the file systems like /, /opt,
/var etc they seem to backup and restore fine.

I'm quite sure in a similar if not a slightly more messy fashion, I can
also get the Networker Module for Oracle working. My nightmare, is
envisioning the future where I must stop all Oracle services (production
as well as development) to upgrade the Networker Client SW of which the
Networker Module for Oracle is dependent on. Of course, the same
nightmare goes for the upgrade of Solaris on this box.

Anyone else have any comments or gotchas on this?
Paula
- 
-- 
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| Paula Ehn  VE4MHZ/VE4HZ                    Room E3-628 EITC     |
| Unix System Administrator                  pehn AT cc.umanitoba DOT ca |
| Academic Computing and Networking          (204)474-7849        |
| University of Manitoba                     Fax: (204) 474-7920  |
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