Zone installation errors on Solaris 11

Had a  "checkpoint error" when installing a zone:

2012-12-10 00:58:35,549 InstallationLogger ERROR Checkpoint execution error:
2012-12-10 00:58:35,599 InstallationLogger ERROR
2012-12-10 00:58:35,649 InstallationLogger ERROR The following pattern(s) did not match any allowable packages. Try
2012-12-10 00:58:35,700 InstallationLogger ERROR using a different matching pattern, or refreshing publisher information:
2012-12-10 00:58:35,750 InstallationLogger ERROR
2012-12-10 00:58:35,800 InstallationLogger ERROR pkg:///entire@0.5.11,5.11-0.175.1.1.0.4.0:20121106T001344Z
2012-12-10 00:58:35,851 InstallationLogger ERROR pkg:/group/system/solaris-small-server
This can occur when the pkg repository is out of date compared to your global zone, but this wasn't my problem -- I was actually using oracle's support repository at the time.

The underlying root cause was a mis-configured application/pkg/system-repository:default service, specifically the config/host SMF property was set to the local hostname, server1 -- while the automated installer seems to assume it's configured on localhost or (127.0.0.1)

Check yours isn't broken by running curl http://localhost:1008 -- you should see a HTTP 404 error. If you get connection refused, you're likely having the same problem I was, or your system-repository service is offline.

NB: I didn't setup this system, but I presume it was set this way out of the box.