I was recently asked how to extract a single file from a Solaris flash archive and, funnily enough it had never occured to me that it might come in handy some day. The procedure is super easy.
First we split the flash archive into one file for each section, the file we’re interested in is called archive. If you don’t know the path and name of the file you want then list the cpio archive and grep for it. The last step is to do the actual extract, or copy in as it’s called in cpio speak.
# flar split myflasharchive.flar
# ls
archive identification predeployment summary
cookie postdeployment reboot
# cpio -it < archive | grep somefile
export/ldap/adduser.ldif
# cpio -ivdm export/ldap/adduser.ldif < archive
export/home/lasseoe/adduser.ldif

If the archive has been compressed then do;

mv archive archive.Z
uncompress archive.Z

Woot.