Advanced Installation Procedures

This section concentrates on two facilities to make it easier to install the Solaris operating environment on multiple systems. JumpStart and Solaris Flash allow identical systems to be installed automatically without the need for manual intervention. Each of these is covered in the following sections.

JumpStart

JumpStart has three main components:

• Boot and Client Identification Services Provided by a networked boot server, these services provide the information that a JumpStart client needs to boot using the network.

• Installation Services Provided by a networked install server, Installation Services provide an image of the Solaris operating environment that a JumpStart client uses as its media source. The image is normally a disk file located on the install server.

• Configuration Services Provided by a networked configuration server, these services provide information that a JumpStart client uses to partition disks and create file systems, add or remove Solaris packages, and perform other configuration tasks.

Table 38 lists and describes some JumpStart commands.

Table 38. JumpStart Commands

Command	Description
setup_install_server	Sets up an install server to provide the operating system to the client during a JumpStart installation.
add_to_install_server	Copies additional packages within a product tree on the Solaris 10 Software and Solaris 10 Languages CDs to the local disk on an existing install server.
add_install_client	Adds network installation information about a system to an install or boot server's /etc files so that the system can install over the network.
rm_install_client	Removes JumpStart clients that were previously set up for network installation.
check	Validates the information in the rules file.
pfinstall	Performs a "dry run" installation to test the profile.
patchadd -C	Adds patches to the files located in the miniroot (that is, Solaris_10/Tools/Boot) on an image of an installation CD image created by setup_install_server. This facility enables you to patch Solaris installation commands and other miniroot-specific commands.

Solaris Flash

The main feature of Solaris Flash is to provide a method to store a snapshot of the Solaris operating environment complete with all installed patches and applications. This snapshot is referred to as the Flash archive and the system that the archive is taken from is referred to as the master machine.

A Flash installation can be used to perform an initial installation or to update an existing installation.

A Flash archive is created with the flarcreate command. You can create a Flash archive that contains a full snapshot of the system, or a differential archive containing only the changes that have been applied when compared to an existing Flash archive. Flash archives are administered with the flar command.

With the flar command, you can

• Extract information from an archive.

• Split archives.

• Combine archives.

When using JumpStart to install from a Flash archive, only the following keywords can be used in the profile:

• archive_location

• install_typeFor a full flash archive install, specify this option as Flash_install. For a differential Flash archive, specify flash_update.

• partitioningOnly the keyword values of explicit or existing must be used.

• filesysThe keyword value auto must not be used.

• forced_deployment

• local_customization

• no_content_checkUsed only for a differential flash archive.

• no_master_checkUsed only for a differential flash archive.

• packageOnly used for a full flash installation; cannot be used with a differential flash archive.

• root_device