Automating Solaris Installations: A Custom Jumpstart Guide (Bk/Disk)

Kasper, Paul Anthony; McClellan, Alan L.

ISBN 10: 013312505X ISBN 13: 9780133125054

Publisher: Prentice Hall, 1995

Synopsis

One of the goals in the computer industry today is to lower the cost of ownership -- i.e., minimize the direct system administration tasks (and thus the cost) of installing, maintaining, upgrading, and customizing systems. The custom JumpStart? (auto-install) installation software provided with the Solaris operating environment for SPARC and X86 was designed with this goal in mind. Focusing exclusively on JumpStart, this book/disk package explains all the steps necessary to automate Solaris installations, describes the Solaris installation process in detail, and provides begin and finish installation scripts that can be adapted to configure systems automatically before or after Solaris is installed. Provides an overview of the custom JumpStart process (with a sample site-setup); shows the details of configuring the network to support custom JumpStart installations; explains how to set up the necessary files to enable custom JumpStart installations; and shows the procedures to boot and install SPARC and x86 systems using custom JumpStart. The working shell scripts provided on diskette ease the automation of pre-and post-installation tasks, such as saving and restoring system data, installing patches, setting up printers, and more. For system administrators responsible for installing Solaris and other pre- and post-installation tasks.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

There are many buzzwords in the computer industry. Some of these are created and perpetuated by marketing and sales organizations. Often, these buzzwords are self-serving, as marketing and sales organizations try to pry their way into an account or to convince a potential customer that they've got a tool absolutely required in an administrator's tool box.

Among the many buzzwords now popular in the computer industry is the phrase, lower the cost of ownership. The idea is to show that some new technology reduces the person power necessary to manage a set of systems and their software, thus reducing the costs to install, maintain, upgrade, and customize systems. The result is that the technology helps maximize system performance or users' productivity, while minimizing the direct system administration tasks.

The system administration community often treats such hyperbole with skepticism, and it is rare to discover a technology that really does lower the cost of ownership. It's even rarer to discover such a technology that is under-publicized.

However, that is the case with the SunSoft custom JumpStart technology (also called auto-install).

Solaris software installation, in particular, is an administrative task that requires an inordinate amount of an administrator's time and effort. It affects the amount of time an administrator can spend on high priority problems and site planning, yet it's a periodic task that has to be done. That is where this book comes in. Automating Solaris Installations intends to expose some of the possibilities for using custom JumpStart installations to lower the cost of software installations...really!

This book shows the basics of setting up the network and custom JumpStart files to automate your software installations; it also provides working shell scripts to help you automate preinstallation and postinstallation tasks, such as saving and restoring system data, installing patches, setting up printers, and more. This book does not show you how to do everything to tailor custom JumpStart installations for your specific site, because every site has its own requirements.

However, if different users or work groups at your site require customized software installations-maybe Solaris software plus a hodgepodge of patches, third-party software, and freeware-this book suggests ways to ensure that each Solaris software installation is consistent and appropriate for the user and the system being installed.

That's exactly what lowering the cost of ownership is all about. Plus, this book shows how to do hands-off Solaris software installations, which is how you save yourself time and effort. Audience Simply stated, this book is for anyone who is too busy to be bothered with the prospect of manually installing Solaris and performing a myriad of other preinstallation and postinstallation tasks.

While custom JumpStart installations obviously make sense for a system administrator with thousands of systems on the network and multiple work groups, using it can help any system administrator who wants to automate the installation process and ensure that systems are installed consistently. Hardware and Software.

This book coincides with and assumes you are running Solaris 2.4. Clearly , many sites don't update operating system releases at the time those releases are made available. If you're running an earlier version of Solaris, most of the information in this book is still valid. The general network configuration, server setup, and custom JumpStart setup is essentially the same across Solaris releases. Also, note that this book describes automating Solaris installations on both x86 and SPARC systems. Where there are differences in the setup or in the installation, this book calls attention to those differences. Internet Sources of Information A plethora of information about custom JumpStart installations is available on the Internet. Many Solaris software users have tailored custom JumpStart installations for their own sites. The comp.unix.solaris and comp.sys.sun.admin Internet news groups have regular comments, questions, and solutions to those questions about custom JumpStart installations. Many Solaris users are doing amazing things with the custom JumpStart technology, and some have set up ftp sites to share their expertise and their scripts. In particular, look at the fwi.uva.nl anonymous ftp site. A group of system administrators at that site have done some extraordinary work using the custom JumpStart technology.

About the Diskette

You can find sample, working begin and finish scripts in the chapter titled, "Sample Begin and Finish Scripts" on page 119. Also, "Profile Examples" on page 109 provides several sample profiles you can use or adapt for your own purposes. Both the scripts and profiles are on the diskette included with this book. Table PR-1 shows how to copy the scripts, profiles, and other files from the diskette.Table PR-1 Copying Files From This Book's Diskette If the System Is Then Running Volume Management1) Insert the diskette into the system's diskette drive.2) Change to the directory you want to copy the files to.3) Use the volcheck command so that the Volume Management software recognizes that the diskette is in the diskette drive: volcheck4) Use tar to extract the files from the diskette: tar xvf /vol/dev/rdiskette0/unlabeledNote: Volume Management is running if the /vol directory on the system contains files. Systems running Solaris 2.0 or 2.1 do not have Volume Management. Not running Volume Management

1) Insert the diskette into the system's diskette drive.

2) Change to the directory you want to copy the files to.

3) Use tar to extract the files from the diskette: tar xvf /dev/dis ketteThe Meaning of Typographic SymbolsAs with most books about Solaris, command and file names are written in courier font.

Italics are used for emphasis and to identify variables.

Table PR-2 shows some special conventions used in this book. Table PR-2 Typographic ConventionsTypeface or SymbolDescriptionIndicates that the accompanying code, command, or file is available on the diskette included with this book tIndicates that the accompanying text is a procedure; procedures are mostly documented in "Appendix A" on page 175 %UNIX C shell prompt $UNIX Bourne shell prompt #The root (also called superuser) prompt, displayed in either shell.

Edition details

• Publisher: Prentice Hall
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 013312505X
• ISBN 13: 9780133125054
• Binding: Textbook Binding
• Number of pages: 320