Software Distribution and Installation Solaris 8

[Mark Spritzler]

IN a post years ago here.
There is a discussion in which pkgadd is involved. I have been assigned a task that is, let's say, not in my career path and expertise. But, none the less, assigned the task.

I am responsible for Top Level Design then Implementation of requirements for software distribution and installation of App Servers, COTS (Over-the-counter software) and Custom applications onto Sun Solaris Servers for the App Server and RDBMS and COTS, and clients (Windows based) for COTS and custom applications.

For Windows, it looks like we are leaning towards using Symantec Ghost Server Console, for our images, application installations and upgrades and custom application self-extracting archives distribution. It is a solution that is not too difficult and I understand that process.

Where I have absolutely no experience is on UNIX based machines and definitely Solaris. So how can I distribute software to multiple servers quickly and easily, not rocket science way.

I might be a little vague, but I was thinking with pkgadd I could create a package from our build script, and then it would know what are volitile files and which aren't for checksum stuff. That way we wouldn't have to write out all the files in the package by hand. Then that package would be manually moved to each server and added. But can I also do that with COTS like Weblogic to install upgrades onto each server?

This is a case of, "I know this has been done many times over, so lets find out the solution without having to re-invent the wheel."

Thanks

Mark
[ July 07, 2005: Message edited by: Mark Spritzler ]

[Michael Ernest]

pkg tools are the way to go. But there are several of them; pkgadd only installs the files from a pkg-based file stream.

Here's a monkey-see, monkey-do example that will get you started. As you'll see, you'll use pkgproto to develop the file install manifest (then edit as necessary), then pkgmk. There are some other tools to help you build preinstall and postinstall scripts into the process.

Where do you think the Ghost's implementation comes from? Come now, you didn't honestly think Windows had an original idea for doing this...?

[Mark Spritzler]

Originally posted by Michael Ernest:
pkg tools are the way to go. But there are several of them; pkgadd only installs the files from a pkg-based file stream.

Here's a monkey-see, monkey-do example that will get you started. As you'll see, you'll use pkgproto to develop the file install manifest (then edit as necessary), then pkgmk. There are some other tools to help you build preinstall and postinstall scripts into the process.

Where do you think the Ghost's implementation comes from? Come now, you didn't honestly think Windows had an original idea for doing this...?

No of course not, I expected the Window version to be an implementation of a command line tool on the UNIX world, but makes it look nice and pretty for the comman man.

Mark

[Tim Holloway]

If you build your software into Solaris packages, you can use Solaris JumpStart to provision machines.