Frequently Asked Questions

What are the required Solaris versions?

For Solaris 10, it’s Solaris 10 update 8.

Earlier versions of Solaris 10 are missing libc 1.22.5.

For Solaris 9, it’s Solaris 9 update 9.

Earlier versions of Solaris 9 are missing libresolv.so.2 version SUNW_2.2.1.

Please provide me with a Solaris binary for <something>.

You don’t get a Solaris 10 binary from a human, please don’t ask maintainers to send you anything. All packages are publicly available from package catalogs. Please follow the installation instructions.

Are services started by default?

By default, services are started upon package installation. You can change that by disabling SMF in csw.conf.

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?

Please see installing on a host without an Internet connection.

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 (a.k.a. pkgname, or pkginst) 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 (32 characters), and is sometimes cryptically condensed. The catalog name has no significance to Solaris itself, and is used by pkgutil and in package catalogs.

Why not use third party dependencies?

Problems with declaring SUNW and SFW packages as dependencies are:

• pkgutil can’t download and/or install them, so declaring them as dependencies won’t help during installation
• they often contain old versions of software (or libraries), while OpenCSW packages need newer versions
• OpenCSW packages must be installable on multiple Solaris versions; a package built for Solaris 9 will also install on Solaris 10. In many cases, the required shared libraries are in packages of different names, e.g. 64-bit version of libfoo.so.1 might be in SUNWfoo on Solaris 10 and SUNWfoox on Solaris 9.

Where is the Solaris 10 version of a package I’m looking at?

As of April 2014 most packages are built for Solaris 10, but since it’s possible to install a Solaris 9 package on Solaris 10, we take advantage of that fact and put Solaris 9 packages in Solaris 10 catalogs.

There are cases where a package can benefit from features specific to Solaris 10, and we create separate Solaris 9 and Solaris 10 package builds.

Are the binaries compiled for advanced Instruction Set Architectures?

Binaries are compiled for basic ISAs. As of April 2014, it means pentium_pro on Intel and sparcv8+ on SPARC.

In most cases, performance is not significantly improved by compiling for advanced ISAs. For those cases where it is, we usually provide cpu-optimized libraries.

If you know of a specific binary that would benefit from cpu-specific optimizations, feel free to contact this package’s maintainer and ask about it.