This document details how to create a package on Solaris. Only the
creation of a simple package is detailed in this doc. For more elaborate
packages, see the relevant man pages.
The following assumptions are being made regarding the package build
described herein:
- the program, etc, has already been installed on the host
the package is to be built upon
- for simplicity, the program, yourProg, and its relevant files
are installed under /usr/local
- you have root on the host (hostA) that the package is going
to be created on
- hostA's root shell prompt is:
hostA [0]
Create a file, proto.input, in /tmp that contains the relative pathnames
of the files and directories relevant to yourProg. Below is an example
of the potential contents of proto.input (no leading space necessary on
each line):
bin
bin/yourProg
etc
etc/yourProg.conf
man
man/man1
man/man1/yourProg.1
share
share/doc
share/doc/yourProg-4.17
share/doc/yourProg-4.17/AUTHORS
share/doc/yourProg-4.17/COPYING
share/doc/yourProg-4.17/ChangeLog
share/doc/yourProg-4.17/README
share/doc/yourProg-4.17/yourProg.conf
share/doc/yourProg-4.17/yourProg.detail
Now, cd into /usr/local, if you aren't already there, and run pkgproto
to create a prototype file:
hostA [0] cd /usr/local
hostA [0] cat /tmp/proto.input | /usr/bin/pkgproto > prototype
Open the prototype file in your favorite text editor (vi) and add the
following at the first line:
i pkginfo=./pkginfo
Also, while editing prototype, ensure that permissions and user:group
ownerships are appropriate. An example of the resulting file should
look similar to the following:
i pkginfo=./pkginfo
d none bin 0755 root other
f none bin/yourProg 4755 root root
d none etc 0755 bin bin
f none etc/yourProg.conf 0600 root root
d none man 0755 root other
d none man/man1 0755 root other
f none man/man1/yourProg.1 0644 root other
d none share 0755 bin bin
d none share/doc 0755 bin bin
d none share/doc/yourProg-4.17 0755 root other
f none share/doc/yourProg-4.17/AUTHORS 0644 root other
f none share/doc/yourProg-4.17/COPYING 0644 root other
f none share/doc/yourProg-4.17/ChangeLog 0644 root other
f none share/doc/yourProg-4.17/README 0644 root other
f none share/doc/yourProg-4.17/yourProg.conf 0644 root other
f none share/doc/yourProg-4.17/yourProg.detail 0644 root other
For further information regarding the prototype file, see prototype(4).
Write the prototype file and create the pkginfo file, again, with your
favorite text editor (vi). The following contents are normally fine:
PKG="SEyourProg"
NAME="yourProg"
ARCH="sparc"
VERSION="4.17"
CATEGORY="application"
VENDOR="Systems Engineering"
EMAIL="systems@domain.com"
PSTAMP="1194018748"
BASEDIR="/usr/local"
DESC="some description of yourProg up to 256 ASCII characters without line breaks."
CLASSES="none"
For a brief breakdown of the above pkginfo parameters:
PKG = the name you have chosen for the package;
since you are doing this for SE,
prepend SE to the name so that it may
be easily identifiable
NAME = the program name
ARCH = the operating system type
VERSION = the version number for your program
CATEGORY = the program is an application
VENDOR = software distributor
EMAIL = an email contact
PSTAMP = any unique ID, such as epoch time of build
BASEDIR = the base directory where the files install
DESC = some description of yourProg up to 256 ASCII characters without line breaks
CLASSES = just put none here
For further information on the pkginfo file, see pkginfo(4). Write the
pkginfo file. Next we create an installable package in directory format,
via pkgmk:
hostA [0] pwd
/usr/local
hostA [0] /usr/bin/pkgmk -r `pwd`
This will create the necessary files for yourProg in /var/spool/pkg.
To translate the package to a datastream, usable by pkgadd, run pkgtrans
from /var/spool/pkg:
hostA [0] cd /var/spool/pkg
hostA [0] /usr/bin/pkgtrans -s `pwd` /tmp/yourProg-4.17
pkgtrans will prompt for which package to make, similar to how pkgadd
prompts for which package to install. Select yourProg to continue.
After pkgtrans completes, a datastream file will be created as
/tmp/yourProg-4.17. /tmp/yourProg-4.17 is a fully usable Sun package.
Optionally, at this point, you can gzip the file:
hostA [0] /usr/bin/gzip /tmp/yourProg-4.17
For further reference, please see the relevant man pages:
pkgproto(1) pkgproto(4) pkginfo(4) pkgmk(1)
pkgtrans(1) cat(1) gzip(1) vi(1)
When I originally wrote this tip, I had used the details provided by
Steve Christensen's sunfreeware site as a guide and reference:
http://sunfreeware.com/pkgadd.html
If you are not familiar with sunfreeware.com, please have a look as
Steve's work has been to the benefit of Solaris admins for the past
16 years. Thanks Steve, and hopefully I didn't plagiarize your notes
too much.
