[csw-users] unstable versus stable

[Dennis Clarke]

> I am running Solaris 10 U2 (sparc). Do I need to specify any
> subdirectory under
> http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/packages/solaris/csw/stable? I noticed that
> there is i386 and sparc. Then under that, there is 5.8, 5.9, 5.10.1,
> 5.10, and 5.11. How does my system know which one to use? Btw, I am 30
> minutes from ibiblio, which is why I have not changed the mirror.
>

The uname command reports the Solaris version. Actually its the SunOS
version but that has not made sense to me since the last SunOS was in
version 4.1.1 back in the early 90's.  The first revs of Solaris would
report that they were SunOS 5.4 or 5.5 or even 5.5.1.  Thankfully we
seem to have settled back into just a major and a minor number and thus
Solaris 8 looks like so :

# uname -X | grep Release
Release = 5.8

A bleeding edge copy of Solaris Nevada looks like so :

$ uname -X | grep Release
Release = 5.11

This is the number used to look into the software tree to find a specific
package IF and only IF a specific package is required.  It makes little
sense to have a specially built version of Apache for the UltraSparc T1
process packaged up and delivered into the 5.8 or 5.9 trees.  That would
have to be specific to 5.10 and up.  Even then .. there are ways around
that.

Dennis