Drill into Oracle Solaris 11
Find out how Oracle Solaris 11 will change your job.
In this issue, Rick Ramsey, Oracle Technology Network systems community
manager, provides an update on Oracle
Solaris 11.
After seven years of continuous development, Oracle launched Oracle Solaris 11
in November 2011 with a completely new
approach to software packaging, patching,
and management. This new architecture
will dramatically change the way sys admins
manage their software, as well as the way
developers package and distribute it.
Those of us who are fans of Oracle Solaris
10 learned to recite UNIX SVR4 (System V
Release 4) package nomenclature in our sleep.
Times change, however, and we need to let
go of the “old ways.” The economic pressures
on data centers are too intense to waste precious sys admin resources on mundane tasks.
Better to use them for higher-level duties,
such as identifying performance bottlenecks,
guarding against security breaches, and
developing an effective provisioning strategy
that includes the cloud.
MEET IMAGE PACKAGING SYS TEM
Oracle Solaris 11’s new packaging architecture, called Image Packaging System (IPS),
spans the entire software lifecycle, including
software installation, patching, upgrades,
and removal. IPS takes the uncertainty out
of software updates by relying exclusively
on repositories.
Before any software is placed in these
repositories, it will be validated by Oracle.
Validation is an automated process that iden-tifies and catalogs dependencies between the
packages in those updates and patches. As a
result, when you download a patch or update
to Oracle Solaris 11, you don’t have to look
through the ReadMe’s, cross-check dependencies, or spend any more time making sure
the patch or update will work.
If you administered Oracle Solaris 10,
you probably used JumpStart to manage
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This new
architecture will
dramatically
change the way
sys admins manage
their software.
your patches and updates. JumpStart uses
profiles to help organize different configurations of software. IPS in Oracle Solaris 11 uses
something similar but more powerful. It is
called a manifest.
A manifest defines what a particular
operating system image contains, including
the names of the packages to be included
in the image, the location of the repository
from where they will be retrieved, any scripts
used to create the new image, and more. IPS
has default manifests for images that will
be distributed on a CD or through an x86 or
SPARC text installer, an x86 or SPARC AI ISO
image, or a virtual machine. You can either
edit those or create your own.
Another benefit of IPS is that it manages
virtual versions of the OS in the same way as
bare-metal versions. IPS lets you deploy a
particular version of the OS into a bare-metal
configuration, a zone, or Oracle VM Server for
SPARC in exactly the same way. No need for a
different manifest.
IPS provides three tools to help you
manage software updates. The pkg( 1)
command is a traditional, full-featured
command-line interface. Package Manager
is a GUI that you can use to search and
manage installed packages. Launch it by
using packagemanager from the command
line. Update Manager, also a GUI, helps you
get a high-level view of full system updates.
Launch it by entering updatemanager on
the command line. In addition, you can
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continue to use pkgadd(1M) to support
SVR4-based software from your Oracle
Solaris 11 installation.
Because the new architecture and
tools were bound to change the way sys
admins manage Oracle Solaris software,
we asked one of our favorite writers, Ginny
Henningsen, to do a little research. Ginny
downloaded Oracle Solaris 11 Express and
used the new tools to perform routine software management tasks. She distilled what
she learned into a series of three articles:
“Best Way to Update Software With IPS in
Oracle Solaris 11,” “Best Way to Automate
ZFS Snapshots and Track Software Updates,”
and “Best Way to Update Software in Zones.”
To read Henningsen’s articles or find other
resources to help you become familiar with IPS
and its tools, go to the Oracle Solaris 11 product
page of the System Admin and Developer
Community of Oracle Technology Network.
Oracle Technology Network is all about
sys admins helping sys admins. (And let’s
not forget developers of C, C++, and Fortran
applications that run on Oracle Solaris or
Oracle Linux!). Join us. We’d love to have
you around.
WEB LOCATOR
Oracle Technology Network Home
oracle.com/technetwork
System Admins and Developers Home Page
oracle.com/technetwork/systems
“Best Way to Update Software With IPS in
Oracle Solaris 11”
bit.ly/wWzmJR
“Best Way to Automate ZFS Snapshots and
Track Software Updates”
bit.ly/yf0PkG
“Best Way to Update Software in Zones”
bit.ly/xcP3Ur
Oracle Solaris 11 Installation Resources
bit.ly/xjoFKI
Oracle Solaris 11 Package Management
Resources
bit.ly/xOeyvJ
