SMF Compatibility

While many standard Solaris services are now managed by SMF, the scripts placed in /etc/rc*.d continue to be executed on run-level transitions. Most of the /etc/rc*.d scripts that were included in previous Solaris releases have been removed as part of SMF. The ability to continue to run the remaining scripts allows for third-party applications to be added without having to convert the services to use SMF.

In addition, /etc/inittab and /etc/inetd.conf must be available for packages to amend with postinstall scripts. These are called legacy-run services. The inetconv command is run to add these legacy-run services to the service configuration repository. The status of these services can be viewed, but no other changes are supported through SMF. Applications that use this feature will not benefit from the precise fault containment provided by SMF.

Applications converted to utilize SMF should no longer make modifications to the /etc/inittab and /etc/inetd.conf files. The converted applications will not use the /etc/rc*.d scripts. Also, the new version of inetd does not look for entries in /etc/inetd.conf.