Are services started by default?
Yes, services are started by default. There’s a way to control whether services are started, using the csw.conf file.
If you disable service startup by default, and you are using OpenSSH from OpenCSW, and you upgrade the openssh package, the ssh service will not be started by default, locking you out of the system. Make sure you make an additional entry telling the SSH service to start automatically.
How can I install CSW packages in a location other than /opt/csw?
OpenCSW packages are not relocatable, so you can’t install them in a location other than /opt/csw. Even if the packages were relocatable from the package system point of view, there are usually paths hard-coded within the packaged applications that point to and rely on /opt/csw (for libraries, configuration files, data files and such). Relocating such applications is application-specific.
How can I transfer packages to a computer without an Internet connection?
Have a look at pkgutil’s --download, --stream, and --target options. You can download packages for a specific platform with all dependencies into one big file in order to transfer and install them on another computer.
Why do packages go by two names (e.g. CSWftype2 and freetype2)?
There are two names associated with every piece of software that we ship: a package name and a catalog name. The package name is used by the underlying Solaris SVR4 package management tools (pkgadd, pkgrm, pkginfo), needs to fit historical limits, and is sometimes cryptically condensed. The catalog name, on the other hand, doesn’t have this length limitation, has no significance to Solaris itself, and is used only by pkgutil. When manipulating packages with pkgutil it’s perfectly acceptable to use the catalog names.
Why not use third party dependencies?
The original concept of CSW packages that Phil had, was originally to layer on top of sun’s “SFW” companion cd packages. This was tried, and unfortunately, fell short. Sun simply does not update some common components often enough, to meet the requirements of a user community that expects to dynamically update their free software with a pkgutil --update once a month, or similar. They expect the latest version of SuperApp… which in turn requires the latest version of SubLib, ….This is actually not a fault of Sun: this is a sensible engineering choice on their part. Most “large enterprise” use of Solaris, is based on the premise that the things in Solaris, are highly stable and thoroughly tested. It takes a certain amount of time to test something thoroughly. That conflicts with the desire for “gimme the latest!!”.
So basically, “the latest, or proven stable/mature: pick one”. Sun is in the business of providing “stable/mature” (and we hope they stay that way!)
Additionally.. we support older releases of Solaris than “The latest”. Sun’s companion CD, doesn’t. So, given that we have to compile the full dependency set anyway… and it is commonly newer than what Sun offers… it makes more sense to depend on “our” packages, rather than Sun’s, for consistency and ease of support by us.
Is it possible to use Sun’s packages if they are up to date on a machine?
There is a limitation of the SVR4 packages. You can either depend on CSWlibsoft, or SUNWlibsoft, but not both. Also, some applications are sensitive to the location of necessary files.
Where are the Solaris 10 packages?
For those cases where it is completely clear that a Solaris 10 specific package is required, to get useful features, we make one available. For the majority of cases, however, there simply is no noticeable benefit to compiling on Solaris 10, compared to compiling on Solaris 9. If you find a case where there is, please let the package maintainer know how to reproduce it, and they will then be then empowered to make a Solaris 10 specific package. When possible, we try to make a “Solaris 9″ package, that includes optional Solaris 10+ features as a transparent layer. This is in order to support “large site” installations, that like to NFS share the /opt/csw filesystem out from a central location, read-only. This then makes it possible to have a single central NFS server (or cluster of servers) that can serve out a single, highly redundant NFS filesystem, across multiple releases of Solaris.
Are the binaries compiled for advanced Instruction Set Architectures?
Binaries are compiled for basic ISAs. In most cases advanced compiling for advanced ISAs doesn’t improve performance significantly. For those cases where it does, we usually provide cpu-optimized libraries.
If there is a specific program that gets appreciable benefits from cpu-specific optimizations (greater than 5%), then you are encouraged to contact the maintainer of that package, so that we can work out the best way to support that specific software/cpu combination.
