> Thanks for the info. However, I am still surprised that there is no ability > to install from local files > as we approach for 4th release. On the face of it, it would seem an easy > thing to add. I guess > if I really needed it I could add it myself.
Yes! Look at people who are coming over from Linux: Red Hat has the idea of installing software from "rpm" files and the more sophisticated "yum install" command for installing from network repositories manages the dependencies among these rpm files. Red Hat Linux servers can be unreliable and get borked up all the time and usually the only way to fix the borked system is to "rebuild from rpms" where you have the rpm files on a remote network file system or installation DVD or thumbdrive and use the "rpm -ivh" command to re-install the broken parts of the operating system from the RPM files. For example, I once was called in as a consultant to fix some other company's broken Red Hat system and the "yum install" command was segfaulting so I had to re-install the "yum" functionality using RPM files. How would you do this in OpenSolaris if IPS was broken? Maybe re-install IPS from an old SysV package with "pkgadd -d" ? Debian and Ubuntu have the same idea as RPM's with their "dpkg" files and the way apt and aptitude work on top of "dpkg". There should be something similar with IPS where you can download the IPS package file for say, SUNWtree or SUNWtop offline and then "pkg install" from the file instead of from a network repository. Oh, and there should be a way to some how put customized scripts inside these package files for automation (like what you can already do with SysV pkg files) so that I can deploy a thousand systems at one time and have them all automatically configure themselves (like what Flash Archive and Jumpstart does in Solaris 10). -- This message posted from opensolaris.org _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
