Prefetch Technologies // Keeping your cache lines cozy

Extracting SMF site manifests

SMF is one of the new features in Solaris 10, and provides the infrastructure needed to start and stop all of the processes that make up a useful system. SMF maintains a repository to store a variety of meta data to describe a service, and this information includes the state of a given service. The state of a service can be enabled if the service is supposed to start when the system boots, or disabled if the service isn't supposed to start when the system boots. I am a big fan of disabling every service that isn't needed to make the server perform it's function, and this is one area where I think SMF shines. Once I get all of the services on a Solaris 10 host configured the way I want them, I use the svccfg "extract" option to dump the service information to a site manifest:

$ svccfg extract > site.xml

After I create this manifest, I use the svccfg "apply" option to apply it to other servers:

$ svccfg apply site.xml

This is rather useful, and sure beats creating a script to do a bunch of mv SXXX to sXXXX. Nice!