[csw-users] Running pkgutil and OpenCSW as non-root?

[Ben Walton]

Excerpts from Victor Hooi's message of Fri Jul 22 23:48:31 -0400 2011:

Hi Victor,

> Would it be possible to perhaps install Solaris on our own machine,
> setup OpenCSW and install the packages, then transplant those
> installed packages onto the box? As in, we'd copy the /opt/csw
> directory to our own prefix, and edit our PATH/LD_LIBRARY_PATH to
> run from there?

This might be possible, depending on how much pain you can endure.  I
wonder if a bind mount wouldn't provide a better experience for you
though?  (Would your admins do that for you?)

You'd need to capture:

/opt/csw
/etc/opt/csw
/var/opt/csw

In rare cases, the packages will also modify things like cron jobs,
/etc/shells, etc, but most of these things (off the top of my head)
can be lived without.

> It's an ugly hack, and I guess we lose things like easy upgrades,
> centralised package management, and easy removes, but it's probably
> a whole lot better than compiling ourselves from scratch.

Probably although neither option seems very appealing. :(

> Failing that, are the compile flag, patches, and procedures for
> building the packages perhaps documented anywhere? We might be able
> to replicate it on our boxes in our own prefix.

We have the bulk of our package build descriptions available here:
http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/gar/

This will include patches, compile options, etc.  The builds are done
with GAR, which is available in that same repository.  Some legacy
packages (and a few more modern ones) are not available from this
repository though.  Bootstrapping an entirely new system with a
different prefix will be a ton of work.  You need to modify GAR
defaults (or override them in your .garrc file) and then rebuild the
world.

Hope this helps.

Thanks
-Ben
--
Ben Walton
Systems Programmer - CHASS
University of Toronto
C:416.407.5610 | W:416.978.4302