Sun Certified System Administrator for Solaris 10 Study Guide Exams 310-XXX & 310-XXX

You can install Solaris 10 from scratch (called initial installation), or you can upgrade your Solaris 7 (or higher version) system to Solaris 10. Depending on your need and environment, there are various installation methods available such as installing from CD-ROM or DVD, network-based installation, custom JumpStart, Solaris flash archives, WAN boot, Solaris live upgrade, and Solaris zones. The minimum memory requirement for Solaris installation is 64 MB for the text installer and 384 MB for the GUI installer.

When you install Solaris, you install a software group that determines the functionality of the system. There are six software groups available: reduced network support, core system support, end user support, developer support, entire support, and entire plus OEM support. A software group consists of clusters and packages. A cluster consists of packages, and a package is a modular software unit that consists of directories and files. After you install a software group, you can install more packages to it, and you can uninstall packages from it by using the pkgadd and pkgrm commands respectively. You can verify the package installation by using the pkgchk command and get information about packages by using the pkginfo command.

Between any two software releases, patches are provided to correct an existing problem or to introduce a new feature. You can install and uninstall the patches by using the patchadd and patchrm commands, respectively. The revision information about all the installed patches on the system can be obtained by using the showrev -p command.

Before you make your system available for other users and start administering it, you need to know how to boot the system and how to shut it down properly under different conditions. We discuss these topics in the next chapter.

Inside the Exam

Comprehend

• If there is enough memory (a minimum of 384 MB), the GUI installation is offered by default and can be overridden with the nowin or text boot option.

• When you use the pkgadd command with the -s option to spool the packages, the packages are only stored to the specified directory but are not actually installed.

• In order to be able to back out of a patch installation (i.e., to bring the system hack to the state in which it was before the patch installation), you must not use the -d option with the patch add command and must not remove the backout files in the backout directory that are created during the patch installation.

Look Out

• By default, the pkgrm command removes all the files associated with the package except those files that are also associated with another package. You can use the -A option to remove even those files shared by other packages without any confirmation.

• Even though the pkgadd command is used in the process of installing a patch, do not use the pkgadd command directly to install a patch instead, use the patchadd command.

• The -d option instructs the patchadd command not to save copies of the files being updated or replaced by this patch installation.

Memorize

• You can upgrade the existing Solaris System to Solaris 10 only if the existing system has the version number 7 or higher; otherwise, you have to use the initial installation.

• The minimum memory requirement for text-based installation is 64 MB and for GUI-based installation is 384 MB.

• The default installation spool directory is. /var/spool/pkg.