Solaris 10: Adding Contributed Software

Solaris 10: Adding Contributed Software

Abstract:
Solaris 10 is an operating system based upon open source software and AT&T System V software. Other open sourced software has traditionally been available. Sun had started the process of bundling open software on a separate companion disk with their operating system.

Process:

The first step of this series, is to install the Solaris 10 operating system.

Insert the Companion CD into the CD-ROM drive on the server, the Volume Manager (vold) will automatically mount the CD-ROM.

Ultra2/root# df -h
Filesystem size used avail capacity Mounted on
...
/vol/dev/dsk/c0t6d0/s10_1009_software_companion
649M 649M 0K 100% /cdrom/s10_1009_software_companion

The Companion CD bundles the source code, proprietary Intel object code, and open SPARC object code packages.

Ultra2/root# cd /cdrom/s10_1009_software_companion/Solaris_Software_Companion
Ultra2/root$ ls -alid Solaris*/Packages
36096 drwxr-xr-x 110 root sys 16384 Aug 27 18:16 Solaris_i386/Packages
4352 drwxr-xr-x 110 root sys 16384 Aug 27 18:16 Solaris_sparc/Packages

The instructions for automatically installing all of the Companion packages are located in the following README file

Ultra2/root# cd /cdrom/s10_1009_software_companion
Ultra2/root# ls -al README
-rw-r--r-- 1 root sys 2619 Aug 27 18:16 README

To install all the packages, use AT&T System V packaging command "pkgadd" for the architecture the system which is being installed under (i.e. sun4u is sparc).

One can pick the packages they want to install, but since there are many prerequisites, this is probably not the wisest way. One should always sit there, the first time they do this in their lives, and press "y" about 100 times, during the install process, reading everything that goes by, so they understand what they are installing.

Ultra2/root# cd /cdrom/s10_1009_software_companion/Solaris_Software_Companion
Ultra2/root# pkgadd -d Solaris_sparc/Packages all
...
Do you want to continue with the installation of <various package> [y,n,?] y
...

After doing several installs, one should automate the process. The README file describes a process to build some install defaults in "/var/tmp/admin" and allow "pkgadd" to just perform the installs automatically. The instructions below use a "here document" in shell, in order to remove the requirement of a user typing this information in manually.

Ultra2/root# cat >/var/tmp/admin <<!
mail=
conflict=nocheck
setuid=nocheck
action=nocheck
partial=nocheck
instance=overwrite
idepend=nocheck
rdepend=nocheck
space=check
!

Ultra2/root# cd /cdrom/s10_1009_software_companion/Solaris_Software_Companion

Ultra2/root# pkgadd -a /var/tmp/admin -d $PWD 

After adding the packages, one should patch Solaris with the latest fixes.