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Friday 1 July 2011

When to use whole root or sparse root?

It is part of the process in creating a zone to decide whether to use a whole root or the sparse root zone.

Let’s define them first.

A whole root zone is the type of zone which has its own copy of the operating system’s files. On the other hand a sparse root zone shares operating system files with the global zone.

Basically when you need to write on /root, /usr and/or /lib file system you really need to use the whole root zone. This provides the flexibility to customize the instance of your operating system.

In simple terms, when you need to install special software applications into your local zones, you should be creating a whole root zone.

If this is not the case, you may want create a sparse root zone to save up some disk space.




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