- 3.1 Service Management Facility (SMF)
- 3.2 How SMF Configuration Works
- 3.3 Modifying Solaris Services Defaults
- Further Reading
3.2 How SMF Configuration Works
A service is shipped together with an SMF manifest. The manifest's format is an XML file in the /var/svc/manifest/ directory. The manifest contains the information about dependencies, if the service is enabled or disabled, and other basic configuration and default information. During system boot, the manifests are imported into the SMF repository. The repository is a database in the /etc/svc/ directory.
You can have multiple manifests or snapshots of each service. At boot, a profile is selected. A profile enables or disables every Solaris service. After the profile initializes the system during boot, an administrator can further customize the configuration by using SMF commands. These commands directly modify the repository and the profile, and the changed configuration is restored at the next boot.