[bug-notifications] [alternatives 0004538]: Symbolic links not created in new sparse-root zone

[Mantis Bug Tracker]

A NOTE has been added to this issue. 
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https://www.opencsw.org/mantis/view.php?id=4538 
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Reported By:                gadavis
Assigned To:                phil
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Project:                    alternatives
Issue ID:                   4538
Category:                   regular use
Reproducibility:            always
Severity:                   major
Priority:                   normal
Status:                     feedback
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Date Submitted:             2010-08-31 22:19 CEST
Last Modified:              2011-05-24 20:47 CEST
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Summary:                    Symbolic links not created in new sparse-root zone
Description: 
There appears to be a bug in the alternatives mechanism when creating a new
sparse-root zone on Solaris 10 systems.

I have a global zone with CSW alternatives, CSWneon, CSWsudo, and
CSWsudo-common installed. The alternatives mechanism has registered the
symlinks in the right locations and alternatives --display neon and
alternatives --display sudo work as expected.

If I then create a new non-global zone with the default inherited paths
(your typical sparse-root zone), alternatives --display whatever shows the
correct paths listed, but the symlinks are not there.

After zone creation, I have to manually force the alternatives mechanism
to install the needed symlinks by running a shell loop:

for d in `ls /opt/csw/share/alternatives`; do 
	alt=`basename $d`; 
	alternatives --auto $alt; 
done

Note that if I uninstall CSWsudo inside the zone and then re-install it,
the alternatives mechanism works as expected. It's only upon initial zone
creation that the alternatives symlinks do not get created.
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 (0009067) jcraig (developer) - 2011-05-24 20:47
 https://www.opencsw.org/mantis/view.php?id=4538#c9067 
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This problem has nothing to do with the existence/non-existence of inherit
package.  Tracing through the "zoneadm install" command it appears that the
CAS used by alternatives does not result in a persistent file. 

I'll not pretend to be an expert here, as I'm merely a hack, but I believe
the i.cswalternative command should use the "installf" command to register
this symlink with the system.  When I look in the
/var/sadm/install/contents file I do not see an entry for /opt/csw/bin/sudo
file.  My reading of the package developer guide leads me to believe files
delivered by a package must either by declared statically in the pkgmap or
dynamically via installf.  I suspect that the zoneadm install process is
removing / disallowing the creation of this file as it isn't/wasn't
properly registered.

I'll continue to hack away at a solution but I thought someone more
familiar with packaging might resolve this issue sooner.  The net effect is
that packages installed from the global zone during the zoneadm install
process will not have their alternatives symlink created.