How to tell Solaris 2.3 that a package is installed
Matt Landau
which I can't find in any of the docs. I've got a bunch of Solaris 2.3
boxes on a network -- on one of them, I install a package in some shared
directory that's available globally via NFS. The machine on which I've
run pkgadd gets a nice entry in /var/sadm/pkg to inform the system (and
more importantly AnswerBook) that the package is available.
How do I inform the OTHER Solaris machines that the package has become
available to them as well? I can't find any variant of pkgadd or pkgchk
that looks like it just creates entries in /var/sadm/pkg for an existing
package. Any clues?
--
Matt Landau Technical Director, Application Toolkits
ma...@x.org X Consortium Inc.
Waiting for a flash of enlightenment in all this blood and thunder.
Casper H.S. Dik
>Okay, sports fans, here's a question that's GOT to have a simple answer,
>which I can't find in any of the docs. I've got a bunch of Solaris 2.3
>boxes on a network -- on one of them, I install a package in some shared
>directory that's available globally via NFS. The machine on which I've
>run pkgadd gets a nice entry in /var/sadm/pkg to inform the system (and
>more importantly AnswerBook) that the package is available.
>How do I inform the OTHER Solaris machines that the package has become
>available to them as well? I can't find any variant of pkgadd or pkgchk
>that looks like it just creates entries in /var/sadm/pkg for an existing
>package. Any clues?
This is all perfectly documented in the answerbook documentation.
There are two ways:
- set the AB_CARDCATALOG environment variable
- create an answerbook_setup ksh script that sets that
variable.
Read the answerbook answerbook.
Casper
Matt Landau
>ma...@x.org (Matt Landau) writes:
>>How do I inform the OTHER Solaris machines that the package has become
>>available to them as well? I can't find any variant of pkgadd or pkgchk
>>that looks like it just creates entries in /var/sadm/pkg for an existing
>>package. Any clues?
>This is all perfectly documented in the answerbook documentation.
>There are two ways:
> - set the AB_CARDCATALOG environment variable
> - create an answerbook_setup ksh script that sets that
> variable.
Yes, this works for -answerbook-, but that wasn't the whole question;
what I'd like to know is how to also get the pkg* tools to understand
Casper H.S. Dik
>Yes, this works for -answerbook-, but that wasn't the whole question;
>what I'd like to know is how to also get the pkg* tools to understand
>that the package is available.
You don't want that. If you make the package tools understand that the
package is available, you'll get all kinds of problems when applying patches.
Why do you want the pkg tools to understand that a package is available,
but mounted from the server?
Casper
Mario Klebsch
>Okay, sports fans, here's a question that's GOT to have a simple answer,
>which I can't find in any of the docs. I've got a bunch of Solaris 2.3
>boxes on a network -- on one of them, I install a package in some shared
>directory that's available globally via NFS. The machine on which I've
>run pkgadd gets a nice entry in /var/sadm/pkg to inform the system (and
>more importantly AnswerBook) that the package is available.
>How do I inform the OTHER Solaris machines that the package has become
>available to them as well? I can't find any variant of pkgadd or pkgchk
>that looks like it just creates entries in /var/sadm/pkg for an existing
>package. Any clues?
We use swmtool to install the packages on the server and on the
clients. The pkgadd on the client reportes some already installed
paths. These were the paths installed on the nfs server.
Mario
--
Mario Klebsch, DG1AM, m...@rob.cs.tu-bs.de +49 531 / 391 - 7457
Institut fuer Robotik und Prozessinformatik der TU Braunschweig
Hamburger Strasse 267, 38114 Braunschweig, Germany
Casper H.S. Dik
>We use swmtool to install the packages on the server and on the
>clients. The pkgadd on the client reportes some already installed
>paths. These were the paths installed on the nfs server.
This is not a good idea. This will cause future patch application on
the clients to fail miserably.
Casper
Matt Landau
Date: Mon, 12 Sep 1994 08:55:33 -0600
From: Julian...@Central.Sun.COM (Julian Taylor)
Subject: Re: pkg question off the net
There is no such mechanism. We are working on it, but for now you would
have to pkgadd your package to each of the clients. If you were to do
that, pkgadd would recognize the mounted remote read-only file system
and skip the installation with the exception that it would insert the
appropriate data into the local database.
I don't imagine this helps, but that's how it works.
Bob Friesenhahn
: ma...@x.org (Matt Landau) writes:
: There are two ways:
: Read the answerbook answerbook.
Well I had not read the answerbook answerbook (being that it was not installed
yet and time is money) so I took a quick look at how the answerbook script
looks for local answerbooks.
I ended up using the "-R root_path" option (relocate) with the pkgadd program to
install the answerbooks along with all the system info to the network directory. I
then added the "-R root_path" option to the pkg commands in the answerbook script.
I had to do some very minor adjustments (add one sym-link per package) to the
installed answerbooks. This means that I can do a pkgrm from any host for a
specific answerbook if I specify the -R option. It also means that doing a
rm -rf on an answerbook does not leave garbage behind on the system.
All-in-all, this approach looks like it takes less work than following the
elaborate instructions in the answerbook answerbook.
Bob
---
Bob Friesenhahn, Interphase
bfri...@iphase.com