Installing Solaris 2.5.1 (HW 4/97) and patches
Casper Dik <casper@holland.Sun.COM>
Joe Pruett <joey@q7.com>
Marc Bellavance <mbellava@Matrox.COM>
jwf@ccuc.on.ca (John W. Funk)
Torsten Huebler <torsten@indra.sachsenlb.de>
Who basically said the same thing.
Original question
---------------------------
The 4/97 release of Solaris 2.5.1 seems to automatically install a large
suite of patches automatically when performing an initial install of the OS.
The problem is that the systems I am installing on are to be OS servers, and
server heterogeneous diskless clients (sun4c and sun4m). Even though I select
the role of the workstation as an OS server during the install, afterwards,
loading Solstice AdminSuite and looking at the system type, it is not shown
as an OS server. I cannot add clients until it is an OS server (which
I then need to convert using AdminSuite) with the proper services for the
other architectures. Unfortunately, attempting to convert and load the
services causes AdminSuite to bomb out because it says that patches have been
installed, and that various packages are now inconsistent with the services
I am trying to install off the CD. It says to use backoutpatch, but this does
not work because the old packages were not saved during patch installation.
Is there a way to prevent the install from loading the patches automatically?
I prefer to load the patches I want manually after all the OS services have
been setup. The only solution I have found so far is to interrupt the install
process when it starts to load the patches (reboot the machine), but it requires
that someone be constantly looking at the console, and I generally don't like
this kind of kludge anyway.
----------------------------
The answer is to customize the list of installed packages and deselect the
"Automatic Maintenance Update Installation" option (SUNWmui).
This does indeed prevent the install from installing all the patches that it was
trying to before. It still installs a couple, but it does not prevent AdminSuite
from working properly.
A couple notes..
Apparently selecting the role of "OS server" during the initial install means
very little, as after installing the OS and AdminSuite, the machine still shows
as type "generic", and has to be converted to an OS server supporting the
desired architectures. Fortunately, if no other patches have been installed,
AdminSuite has no problem converting the system to a role of "OS server".
Once such a machine is converted to an OS server, the installation of patches
should be done differently. Just using the generic "installpatch" could very
well confuse AdminSuite to the point where it doesn't think the system is an OS
server anymore. Worse yet, you may not be able to convert it to an OS server
because some packages are now inconsistent with the CD, and AdminSuite errors
out.
The proper procedure to install patches is to use
/opt/SUNWadm/bin/admclientpatch -a <patch location> -s. This copies the patch to
a separate spool directory (/opt/SUNWadmd/Patches), and synchronizes the server
and all its clients. Patches that are so spooled are automatically applied when
you add a new diskless host with AdminSuite.
This brings up an interesting point. The Automatic Maintenance Update option is
supposedly NOT deselectable for the new Ultra 30 and 450 machines (according to
Casper Dik). So it seems likely that these machines will not be useable in an OS
server role, because once the patches are installed, AdminSuite will probably
refuse to allow you to convert the system to an OS server, let alone define
diskless clients. I can't test this since I don't have any of those machines
(yet).
--
Russ Poffenberger Engineering Specialist
Schlumberger Technologies ATE DOMAIN:poffen@San-Jose.ate.slb.com
1601 Technology Drive CIS: 72401,276
San Jose, Ca. 95110 Voice: (408)437-5254 FAX: (408)437-5246
