1   Prerequisites

To install the NPCT on top of a Solaris system, you'll need to make sure you have the following Sun packages installed:

Copy/paste the following commands to quickly check this:

# pkginfo SUNWcsd SUNWcsr SUNWcsu SUNWcsl
# pkginfo SUNWscpr SUNWscpu
# pkginfo SUNWxcu4 SUNWesu SUNWgzip

If you also want to install GUI applications, you'll probably also need to install the OpenWindows environment packages -- too long to be listed here, but they'll probably be installed in every default Solaris configuration.

2   Quick start

NPCT installs in a "sandbox", located under /usr/pkg (which means you'll require root access to the machine you're installing on).

Download Solarpack's latest NPC binary kit, available in a .tar.Z tarball form, and unpack the tarball at the root of your filesystem.

You need to set a few environment variables for proper operation:

PKG_TMPDIR

set this to a temporary directory. This directory will be used as a staging area when binary packages are unpacked, before actually installing them:

# PKG_TMPDIR=/usr/pkg/tmp; export PKG_TMPDIR

Note that PKG_TMPDIR defaults to /var/tmp, which you'll possibly find convenient.

PKG_PATH

this is a colon-separated list of where pkg_add will look for binary packages.

If you're going to use the Solarpack's project binary repository, set it with (e.g.) the following Bourne shell script snippet:

# OS_VERSION=`uname -r`         # 5.8 for Solaris 8, etc.
# OS_PLATFORM=`uname -p`        # either 'sparc' or 'i386'
# REMOTE_DIR="pub/sourceforge/solarpack/direct_download"
# REMOTE_DIR="${REMOTE_DIR}/SunOS-${OS_VERSION}/${OS_PLATFORM}/All"
# SERVER="<SERVER>"
# PKG_PATH="ftp://${SERVER}.dl.sf.net/${REMOTE_DIR}"
# export PKG_PATH

Sample PKG_PATH value:

ftp://umn.dl.sf.net/pub/sourceforge/solarpack\
        /direct_download/SunOS-5.8/sparc/All

Please note that the URL``s in ``PKG_PATH should not end with a / character.

Replace <SERVER> with the download server closest to you. The values (mirrors) that are currently possible for <SERVER> are:

• umn (Minneapolis, MN, USA)
• unc (Chapel Hill, NC, USA)

Of course, you can add all of these servers in case one of them is offline. Note that the other SourceForge mirrors are not usable, since they don't have an anonymous FTP service.

If you're going to build packages from source, make sure the first item of PKG_PATH is your local package repository; normally it's /usr/solarpkgsrc/packages/All. Other items can include http and ftp resources, but recursive dependency resolution will only be possible with ftp servers.

PATH

prepend /usr/pkg/bin, which will contain the executables of the packages you'll install. It should also contain /usr/pkg/X/bin (for X11-based packages). For the super-user root account, you may also want to add /usr/pkg/sbin to your path because it contains all the management tools like pkg_*:

# PATH=/usr/pkg/bin:/usr/pkg/sbin:${PATH}

LD_LIBRARY_PATH

prefix it by /usr/pkg/lib and /usr/pkg/X/lib:

# LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/pkg/lib:/usr/pkg/X/lib:${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}

or:

# LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/pkg/lib:/usr/pkg/X/lib
# export LD_LIBRARY_PATH

Now that the environment is set, you'll learn how to install binary packages in the following section.

3   Managing binary packages

Until the development of our package manager, zounds, enters beta status, the tools that can be used are the low-level tools provided with Zoularis. These tools have often a similar name as the native SVr4 packaging tools provided by Solaris; but making the difference is easy thanks to the underscore infixed in their name.

The basic three tools used to manage binary packages are pkg_info(1) pkg_add(1), and pkg_delete(1). pkg_add and pkg_delete can only be used by the root user -- remember to set the environmental variables for this user as specified before.

For more information, and uncommon uses, take a look at the manpages.

Common uses:

pkg_add <package>

looks for a package in one of the locations specified by PKG_PATH; then downloads, unpacks and installs <package>, which can either be a package name (e.g. bison), a local file (/space/packages/bison-1.35.tgz) or an FTP URL. Dependencies are fetched, unpacked and installed first, of course.

Notes:

• you can also use HTTP URLs, but dependencies won't be resolved, as the contents of a directory can't be listed through HTTP.
• with plain package names as well as with FTP URLs, you don't have to specify the full package name (with version number and .tgz extension); the latest available version will then be used.

pkg_delete [-R] <package>

uninstalls a package. With the -R option, dependencies are also removed unless required by another package.

pkg_info [<package>]

lists summary information about all the installed packages If a package name is specified, shows details about a package.

<package> can either be a package name in short form (e.g. teTeX) or a path to a binary package file (e.g. ./lang/gcc-2.95.3nb2.tgz), or even a glob pattern on package names.

pkg_info -FI <file>

shows which package <file> (absolute path) belongs to.

pkg_info -n <package>

shows which package(s) <package> depends upon.

pkg_info -R <package>

shows which package(s) depend upon <package>.

4   Notes

# man -d foobar

unformatted = /usr/pkg/man/man1/foobar.1

# gnroff -mandoc /usr/pkg/man/man1/foobar.1 | less -is