After you create a class file, you can use the pfinstall command to test it. Testing a class file is sometimes called a “dry run” installation. By looking at the installation output generated by pfinstall, you can quickly determine whether a class file will do what you expect. For example, you can determine whether a system has enough disk space to upgrade to a new release of Solaris before you actually perform the upgrade.
To test a class file for a particular Solaris release, you must test it within the Solaris environment of the same release. For example, if you want to test a class file for Solaris 9, you have to run the pfinstall command on a system running Solaris 9.
To test the class file, change to the JumpStart directory that contains the class file and type the following:
/usr/sbin/install.d/pfinstall –d
or
/usr/sbin/install.d/pfinstall –D
Caution
Without the -d or -D option, pfinstall actually installs the Solaris software on the system by using the specified class file, and the data on the system is overwritten.
Here is the syntax for pfinstall:
/usr/sbin/install.d/pfinstall [-D | -d] <disk_config> [-c <path>] <profile>
The pfinstall options are described in Table 7.18.
You can create a <disk_config> file by issuing the following command:
prtvtoc /dev/rdsk/<device_name> > <disk_config>
/dev/rdsk/<device_name> is the device name of the system’s disk. <device_name> must be in the form c?t?d?s2 or c?d?s2. <disk_config> is the name of the disk configuration file.
Note
c?t?d?s2 designates a specific target for a SCSI disk, and c?d?s2 designates a non-SCSI disk.
prtvtoc /dev/rdsk/c0t3d0s2 >test
The file named test created by this example would be your <disk_config> file, and it would look like this:
* /dev/rdsk/c0t3d0s2 partition map * * Dimensions: * 512 bytes/sector * 126 sectors/track * 4 tracks/cylinder * 504 sectors/cylinder * 4106 cylinders * 4104 accessible cylinders * * Flags: * 1: unmountable * 10: read-only * * First Sector Last * Partition Tag Flags Sector Count Sector Mount Directory 0 2 00 0 268632 268631 / 1 3 01 268632 193032 461663 2 5 00 0 2068416 2068415 3 0 00 461664 152712 614375 /export 4 0 00 614376 141624 755999 /export/swap 6 4 00 756000 1312416 068415 /usr
Note
If you want to test installing Solaris software on multiple disks, concatenate single disk configuration files and save the output to a new file.
The following example tests the ultra_class class file against the disk configuration on a Solaris 9 system on which pfinstall is being run. The ultra_class class file is located in the /export/jumpstart directory, and the path to the Solaris CD-ROM image is specified because Volume Management is being used.
In addition, if you want to test the class file for a system with a specific system memory size, set SYS_MEMSIZE to the specific memory size in MB, as follows:
SYS_MEMSIZE=memory_size export SYS_MEMSIZE cd /export/jumpstart /usr/sbin/install.d/pfinstall -D -c /cdrom/cdrom0/s0 ultra_class
The system tests the class file and displays several pages of results. Look for the following message, which indicates that the test was successful:
Installation complete Test run complete. Exit status 0.