Summary of Method

Having successfully achieved the Live ZFS boot, I summarize here my process and logic--the details to perform each step will follow. In all steps I use opensolaris 2008.05. It is suggested these steps be performed from the liveCD or USB, and you will need 200+ MB of free storage on some media for temporary files.

I used a hybrid between the LiveCD boot and the standard ZFS boot strategies to produce my live boot. The concept is as follows:
1) Initiate live boot procedures from x86.microroot Ramdisk image, loading kernel and following standard boot up until /sbin/init is called. See Setting Up the Live USB
2) Using a custom /sbin/init, import and mount ZFS boot volume as installed by standard installer. Note that this is on the same disk as x86.microroot. Then remount necessary virtual filesystems (/devices, /dev, /proc, etc.). See Altering /sbin/init
3) The /sbin/init in the microroot is actually a proxy that calls the /sbin/init from the zfs volume when it has been discovered and prepared. Call /sbin/init with all parameters passed from Kernel to microroot init. The boot continues as ZFS boot normally does...

I will elaborate on all these steps, as well as the necessary infrastructure to prepare them.

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