Master Solaris 8 Build

[OneKingstonian]

Hi – this question was probably asked and answered before, but I can’t find it anywhere so here goes.

I am fairly new to Solaris and I have a project to build several Solaris 8 servers from scratch. I was wondering if there is a way to create a master build that I could then use to copy to multiple servers. Then just change the machine id (hostname, IP address, etc.)

I was considered using the dd command to copy the entire disk, but unfortunately not all of the machines have spare disk drives. Is it possible to use dd (or some similar command) to copy an entire drive to a DVD?

 

[blainepruitt]

You could always try setting up a Jumpstart server. Assuming you have enough free space on a master server to house the CDs it's pretty easy to setup. I don't have my documentation in front of me now, but if you do a google search for jumpstart solaris 8 I'm sure you could come up with the steps.

 

[elgrandeperro]

Jumpstart is the tried and true installer. You will need to twiddle the config if the hardware is different. And each custom package, you need to get the jumpstart to install it.

FlashArchive is the newer way to copy a system from one to another. I have only seen demos from Sun, but it seemed to work.

BTW, dd-ing the disk is not efficient because you take all the empty blocks, you HAVE to be booted from alternate media (if you are dd-ing root) and I am not sure the cylinder boundries are going to work right with different disks. Very dangererous.

To take a filesystem image, use ufsdump with '0f filename' option. Once again, the source filesystem must be quiescent (unmounted) because open files may not be copied correctly.

So one way to do the install (not that I have done this) is
to write a bootable DVD with the ufsdump images. So you would boot, format the new drives, mount the new drives and ufsrestore the new filesystems.

eugene

 

[maximusGeek]

Flash Archives work.. unless your including databases (database is corrupted). Watch out for installed applications that depend on hostnames and IP addresses, when using flash archives. I personally prefer good old jumpstart. but I have worked with flash archives successfully.