IPS enables you to create and manage images on your OpenSolaris system. An installed OpenSolaris system constitutes an image. Packages can be installed directly within this image. New images are created to mark a boundary between the packages installed in different images. The pkg command can be used to create and manage images. The pkg image-create subcommand sets up a relationship between the image, a publisher and a package repository that can be used to retrieve package information and content and perform packaging operations within an image.An image is a location on your system where packages and their associated files, directories, links, and dependencies can be installed.An image can be one of these types:Full images, capable of providing a complete system Partial images, which are linked to a full image (parent image), but do not provide a complete system on their own User images, which contain only relocatable packages After you have completed the installation of the OpenSolaris 2009.06 release on your system, the root file system and its contents are already contained within an image. As a result, you do not need to create an image to perform software management tasks for the installed system. However, creating images is required to provide logical separation between different software applications, such as those that occur during a zone creation process.The following figure shows the concept of an image:

See the Zones section in the Solaris Containers - Resource Management and Solaris Zones guide to learn about zones.The following image creation and image management tasks are supported:See the section for a complete list of options supported with each pkg(1) command. Ensure that you have write privileges to the directory where you are attempting to create an image.See the section for important information about image creation. Use the following command to create an image. A user image is created by default.$ pfexec pkg image-create [R][FfPUz] p prefix=repository_url directory_location In this example, a full image is created with a package repository located at http://pkg.example.com, with example.com set as the preferred publisher. The image is created in the directory /aux0/example_root. The p option is used to specify the location of the package repository such as http://pkg.example.com/.$ pfexec pkg image-create -F -p example.com=http://pkg.example.com/ /aux0/example_root Use the following command to view the properties of an image :$ pkg property [H] [propname]The following properties are displayed :Property Name Description send-uuid This property causes the client to include a Universally Unique Identifier (UUID) in transactions with servers for the image. This property enables the server to uniquely identify clients. require-optional This property forces packages that are listed as an optional dependency of another package to be installed during installation, upgrade, or removal of a package. flush-content-cache-on-success A value of True will cause the download cache to be purged for the image upon successful completion of a packaging operation such as installation, uninstallation, or an image-update. display-copyrights Read—only for OpenSolaris 2009.06 release. preferred-publisher Read—only for OpenSolaris 2009.06 release. pursue-latest Read—only for OpenSolaris 2009.06 release. $ pkg property PROPERTY VALUE send-uuid False require-optional False flush-content-cache-on-success False display-copyrights True preferred-publisher opensolaris.org pursue-latest True Use the following command to set the property of an image:$ pfexec pkg set-property propnameThe following properties are read-only and cannot be set using this command.display-copyrights preferred-publisher pursue-latest This example sets the value of the send-uuid property.$ pkg property PROPERTY VALUE send-uuid False require-optional False flush-content-cache-on-success False display-copyrights True preferred-publisher opensolaris.org pursue-latest True $ pkg -R set-property send-uuid True $ pkg property PROPERTY VALUE send-uuid True require-optional False flush-content-cache-on-success False display-copyrights True preferred-publisher local pursue-latest True Use the following command to remove one or more properties of an image.$ pfexec pkg unset-property propnameThe pkg unset-property command removes the specified properties and resets the property to the default value the next time a pkg1command is executed.The following properties are read-only and cannot be removed by using this command.display-copyrights preferred-publisher pursue-latest This example removes the send-uuid property. $ pkg unset-property send-uuid $ pkg property PROPERTY VALUE send-uuid False require-optional False flush-content-cache-on-success False display-copyrights True preferred-publisher local pursue-latest True This task updates all installed packages in the current image to the latest available version.All packages that have been updated in the repository will be downloaded and installed.All packages for the publishers configured in the image, excluding disabled publishers, will be retrieved and upgraded for those that have newer versions available. If more than one publisher offers the same package, then the package will be downloaded from the preferred publisher. Use the following command to update all packages in the current image to the latest version.$ pfexec pkg image-update $ pfexeec pkg image-update A clone of opensolaris exists and has been updated and activated. On next boot the Boot Environment opensolaris-1 will be mounted on '/'. Reboot when ready to switch to this updated BE. os# beadm list BE Active Active on Mountpoint Space Name reboot Used ---- ------ --------- ---------- ----- opensolaris yes no legacy 57.5K opensolaris-1 no yes - 2.59G In this example, the initial boot environment created by the installer is named opensolaris. The boot environment created by the pkg image-update command is automatically named opensolaris-1.After rebooting to the changed boot environment, any inactive boot environment can be destroyed to save space by running the beadm destroy command. For more information regarding boot environments and the beadm(1) command, see the Upgrading and Managing Your Boot Environments section. This example updates an image in a boot environment that is mounted at /mnt. # beadm mount BE1 /mnt # pkg -R /mnt image-update When using the image-create subcommand, avoid creating an image at the location of an already existing image such as / for an installed system or within a directory contained within an existing package such as /usr. This will cause you to lose packaging information within an image, or prevent IPS from properly managing packages within the image. You must set publisher and package repository information when you create an image. Use the p option to provide this information. When you have multiple images on your system, use the PKG_IMAGE environment variable or the R option to specify what image you're operating on. The current design of IPS assumes that only one version of a package is installed in a single image. To install multiple versions of the same package, ensure that the name of the package includes the version number, and dependencies reflect the version number and bind to the appropriate package version. When you run the pkg image-update command or update your image using the Package Manager, the process of updating all the packages automatically creates a clone: a new, bootable environment. The process of updating all the packages applies the changes to the clone instead of to the original boot environment. After the successful completion of the changes to the clone and system reboot, the new clone is provided as the default, active boot environment in the GRUB menu. The original boot environment remains on the GRUB menu as an alternate selection.A clone of the boot environment includes everything hierarchically under the main root dataset of the original boot environment. Shared file systems are not under the root dataset and are not cloned. Instead, the boot environment accesses the original shared file systems. The pkg image-update command does not upgrade zones. If you have included zones in your OpenSolaris environment, the pkg image-update command clones these existing zones into the new boot environment, but these zones are not upgraded. You must manually upgrade each of these zones. After upgrading an image or boot environment, you can use the beadm list command to see a list of the boot environments on the system, including the new boot environment that was created by the pkg image-update command.