Simon Krenger

In my first post, I took the first steps in Solaris 10 and created a basic environment for anyone with Linux experience. Now, in Solaris I really miss the possibility to add packages via a repository. So in this post, I will set up the OpenCSW (Open Community SoftWare) repository, so people with Linux background can easily add new packages in a familiar way. This post includes all steps from the OpenCSW site.

Installing pkgutil

To begin with, there are two possibilities of using OpenCSW: pkg-get and pkgutil. While pkg-get is the original method of installing OpenCSW packages, I will focus on pkgutil. To download and install the pkgutil package, run the following command as root:

# pkgadd -d http://mirror.opencsw.org/opencsw/official/pkgutil-`uname -p`.pkg

If you run into problems, refer to the OpenCSW site for more information.

Configuration

OpenCSW will install all packages to /opt/csw, so we will need to add /opt/csw/bin to our PATH. To do this, edit the file /etc/defaults/login and add “/opt/csw/bin” to your configuration. The OpenCSW website also notes:

You also need gzip somewhere in your PATH. Most people do these days, unless you did a minimalist “Core install” of Solaris.

Beware that you might not have a current version of pkgutil. So to make sure you have the latest version, run the following command:

# pkgutil -u pkgutil

To test things out, let’s install VIM:

# export PATH=/opt/csw/bin:$PATH
# pkgutil -i vim

To get a list of packages provided by OpenCSW, click here.