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Pkg-get: Setting up a Repository System for Solaris

Introduction

Package installation in Solaris is quite basic by default, and recompiling sources is not always simple or fast. This is why I suggest using pkg-get, which is a very practical utility that allows you to install your desired packages for Solaris (SPARC or x86) in just a few seconds or minutes.

Installation

New Method

The new method makes things much simpler:

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pkgadd -d http://get.opencsw.org/now

Then add /opt/csw/bin to your path:

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export PATH=$PATH:/opt/csw/bin

And that's it :-)

Old Method

First, you need wget! I suggest downloading it from these URLs:

Then place it in the /usr/bin/ directory of your Solaris. Rename it to wget to simplify the task:

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mv /usr/bin/wget-i386.bin /usr/bin/wget
chmod 755 /usr/bin/wget

Next, add /opt/csw/bin to your path:

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export PATH=$PATH:/opt/csw/bin

This is obviously a temporary solution for your PATH, but I recommend adding it to the /etc/profile file:

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echo "export PATH=$PATH:/opt/csw/bin" >> /etc/profile

You should also have gzip installed (normally it's included by default, but I prefer to specify it...). Now that wget is installed, we just need to download pkg_get:

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wget http://www.blastwave.org/pkg_get-3.8-all-CSW.pkg

And let's proceed with the installation:

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pkgadd -d pkg_get-3.8-all-CSW.pkg

In response to the questions, answer all and yes every time :-).

Configuration

Let's edit the /opt/csw/etc/pkg-get.conf file to select the most appropriate mirror from this list.

Usage

Now that everything is set up, we can use it. First, update the list of available packages using pkg-get or pkgutil (depending on the version of opencsw you have):

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pkg-get -U

or

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pkgutil -U

To search (for example, for vim), use this command:

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pkg-get -a

And then to install it:

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pkg-get install vim

or

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pkgutil -i vim

It's not complicated and saves a tremendous amount of time :-)