[OmniOS-discuss] IPS & BE creation suppression

[Eric Sproul]

On Mon, Aug 20, 2012 at 5:38 PM, Jason J. W. Williams
<jasonjwwilliams at gmail.com> wrote:
> That could be a bit tricky. They'd have to check after every package install
> directive to see if there was a new BE and start writing to that path
> instead. We're trying to dump OpenIndiana for Illumian because of this, was
> open OmniOS's packages would be more friendly to the "suppress new BE" flag
> that IPS takes.

Not all BEs are create equal.  Note that on some pkg operations, a
"backup BE" is created, but it will not be necessary to boot into it.
They can be safely removed

The creation of backup BEs and other BE-related operations are
controlled by the image property "be-policy".  The default policy is
the same as the "create-backup" option.  See the pkg(1) man page in
the section "IMAGE PROPERTIES".  It actually explains pretty well the
reasoning for each policy.

You could set the policy such that backup BEs are never made
(be-policy "when-required").  That way if you see a new BE, you'll
know a reboot is required before continuing.

Eric