[csw-users] blastwave package question

[Cory Omand]

On 8/15/06, Larry W. Virden <lvirden at cas.org> wrote:
> I'm investigating the possible use of some blastwave packages. However,
> I need to discover an answer to an administrative question.
>
> When an administer does a pkgadd of a Sun package, some audit trail files
> are created/updated in root file systems, so that one can query what
> versions of the package are installed, etc.

Hi Larry,

When an admin uses pkgadd/pkgrm, administrative files in /var/sadm are
updated.  The Blastwave pkg-get utility is a wrapper around
pkgadd/pkgrm which provides the ability to download packages and their
dependencies from a mirror site.  So using pkg-get to add a single
package has the same effect on your local system as using pkgadd
directly.  No additional package state files are stored in parallel to
the system package database.

Note that these administrative files don't have to exist in the root
filesystem -- they are kept on a per-zone basis on Solaris 10+, and
can be written under a specific root path using the pkgadd/pkgrm '-R'
flag.  See the pkgadd/pkgrm man pages for complete details.

> The system admins are concerned that use of the blastwave pkg_add will create
> a situation where, when they apply Sun patches or upgrades, blastwave info
> may be overwritten and someone would then need to reinstall the packages.

Sun provided patches or upgrades will not affect the Blastwave installation.

HTH,
Cory.