To disable a service for jumpstart/create zone

Question

To disable a service once a system is up a running, "svcadm disable" does the job well.
What would the suggested way of disabling a service before the system is up an running, in order to guarantee a service never runs.
Clarification of this point would be from a finish script when a system is being built using a Jumpstart system (which might traditionally use something like rm /a/etc/rc3.d/S55thing), or when creating a zone (which might use rm /zoneroot/zonename/root/etc/rc3.d/S55thing), either of these not running in the true context of the end system.

Answer 1

I wanted to elaborate a little on Tobin's comments.
Most of the Solaris services come disabled by default, but many of them are also re-enabled by our default profile, generic_open.xml.
Brian, you're on the right track, though -- changing the manifest isn't the right way to disable a service. Manifests we deliver aren't editable -- they'll get overwritten, not preserved on upgrade. You also shouldn't modify the profiles that we ship, as they're also overwritten on upgrade.
So how do you do the disabling, when you don't have a running repository to modify?
The best way is to provide a site-specific profile. You can create your own /var/svc/profile/site.xml which will be applied to the system after the system-supplied profiles (during svc:/system/manifest-import). There you can describe services as enabled or disabled.
Just create /a/var/svc/profile/site.xml during your jumpstart finish script. See the other .xml files in /var/svc/profile for examples of the format.
You can also test your profile on a running system by using "svccfg apply".