Methods of Installing the Solaris 9 Software
You can use one of five methods to install the Solaris software: interactive (suninstall or Web Start), JumpStart, custom JumpStart, or installation over the network.
Interactive
The Solaris Interactive Installation program, suninstall, guides you step by step through installing the Solaris software. I like to refer to this installation as the conventional interactive installation. If you’ve installed previous versions of Solaris, this is the original interactive installation. With this installation, you need to know more about Solaris and other software products before installing them. The interactive program does not allow you to install all of the software (Solaris software and copackaged software) in your product box at once; it installs only the SunOS software. After you install the Solaris software, you must install the other copackaged software by using the copackaged installation programs.
If you are new to Solaris, the Web Start interactive installation process uses a friendly GUI interface and might be easier to use.
JumpStart
JumpStart provides the capability to install Solaris on a new system by inserting the CD-ROM into the CD-ROM drive and turning on power to the system. No interaction is required. The software components installed are specified by a default profile that is selected based on the model and disk size of the system.
All new SPARC-based systems have the JumpStart software (a preinstalled boot image) preinstalled on the boot disk. You can install the JumpStart software on existing systems by using the re-preinstall command.
Custom JumpStart
This method, formerly called autoinstall, enables you to automatically—and identically—install many systems with the same configuration without having to configure each of them individually. Custom JumpStart requires upfront setup of configuration files before the systems can be installed, but it’s the most cost effective way to automatically install Solaris software for a large installation.
Custom JumpStart is described in Chapter 7, “JumpStart.”
Note
On a new system that Sun shipped, the installation software is specified by a default profile based on the system’s model and the size of its disks; you don’t have a choice of the software to be installed. Make sure this JumpStart configuration is suited to your environment. The system loads the end-user distribution group and sets up minimal swap space. Partitions and their sizes are set up by using default parameters that might not be suitable for the applications you plan to install.
When might you want to use JumpStart? For example, suppose you need to install the Solaris software on 50 systems. Of these 50 systems to be installed, 25 are in engineering as standalone systems with the entire distribution software group, and 25 are in the IS group with the developer distribution software group. JumpStart enables you to set up a configuration file for each department and install the operating system identically on all the systems. This process facilitates the installation by automating it, ensuring consistency between systems. JumpStart is covered in detail in the next chapter.
Web Start
The Web Start installation program is located on the Solaris Installation CD-ROM and can be run with a graphical user interface (GUI) or with a command-line interface (CLI). Using Solaris Web Start and Sun’s web browser, you select either a default installation or a customize option to install only the software you want, including the Solaris software group, Solstice utilities, and additional software. You also can use Web Start to upgrade the OS on your system.
Note
One of the main advantages of Web Start over suninstall is that it enables you to install all additional software during the installation process. With suninstall, you can only install the OS and must go back after the installation is finished to install the additional software.
Web Start is particularly helpful if you are new to Solaris. Installation tasks are divided into panels that prompt you to enter system configuration information. The panels offer default values for you to select as well as helpful prompts for each step.
Note
Web Start requires a minimum 512MB swap partition just to load the Web Start installation program. This is in addition to the disk space required for the file systems where the OS will be installed. In addition, it takes a fair amount of time just to copy the installation program from the CD-ROM onto the disk drive. It’s for this reason that more experienced system administrators feel that the Web Start installation method is not the most efficient method for installing systems. Most still prefer the conventional interactive installation method using suninstall. suninstall runs directly from the CD-ROM and does not require any additional disk space.
Also in Solaris 9 is the Web Start Flash installation feature that enables you to create a single reference installation of the Solaris operating environment on a machine, which is called the master machine. After installing the operating system onto the master machine, you can add or delete software and modify system configuration information as necessary. Then you can replicate that installation on a number of systems, which are called clone machines.
The Web Start method of installation is covered in Chapter 8, “Web Start.”
Installing Over the Network
Because the Solaris software is distributed on a CD-ROM, a system must have access to a CD-ROM drive to install it. However, if you don’t have a local CD-ROM, you can set up the system to install from a remote CD-ROM or CD-ROM image on a remote disk drive. The remote Solaris CD-ROM image must be provided by an installation server that has either the Solaris CD-ROM copied to its hard disk or the Solaris CD-ROM mounted from its CD-ROM drive. Installing the operating system across the network is handy when a local CD-ROM is not available.