Specifications

Red Hat Enterprise Linux to Oracle Solaris Porting Guide
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Packaging on Oracle Solaris 11
Oracle Solaris 11 takes a new approach to package management that greatly simplifies the process of
managing patches and updates to help reduce the risk of operating system maintenance issues. Based
on extensive customer feedback about patch and upgrade processes for Oracle Solaris 10, Oracle
engineers completely redesigned the software packaging system in Oracle Solaris 11. Oracle Solaris 11
represents a significant change for system administrators because of its new software packaging
model—the Image Packaging System (IPS).
As the Oracle Solaris operating system evolved to include new technologies, such as Oracle Solaris
Zones, ZFS, and Service Management Facility, previously used processes for managing system updates
and upgrades became more complex. With thousands of operating system instances installed in some
of today’s large virtualized data centers, manual methods of tracking and installing patches can result in
errors that negatively affect application service availability and data center security.
IPS is a comprehensive delivery framework that spans the complete software lifecycle addressing
software installation, updates, system upgrades, and the removal of software packages. In contrast to
the SVR4 packaging model used in earlier Oracle Solaris releases, IPS eliminates the need for patching.
Relying on the use of software repositories, IPS dramatically changes how an administrator updates
system and application software. IPS relies on network accessible or locally available software repositories as
a delivery mechanism, which is similar to how other operating systems (for example, RHEL) supply
software updates. During a package install, IPS performs automatic dependency checking and adds
additional packages, such as libraries, that might be required.
Administrators can easily set up and manage local repositories to deploy both OS and application
packages within network-restricted environments. Repositories are also easily mirrored, allowing an
administrator to optimize for more efficient access.
The default network-accessible repository for Oracle Solaris 11 is at
http://pkg.oracle.com/solaris/release
. This repository contains updates for each new release of Oracle
Solaris. Significant bug fixes, security updates, and new software might be provided at any time, at
Oracle's discretion, for users to install.
The support repository is available at https://pkg.oracle.com/solaris/support. The support repository
provides the latest bug fixes and updates. Access is restricted to users with current Oracle Solaris
support contracts.
Preparing an Application for Packaging
IPS is a framework that enables you to list, search, install, update, and remove software packages for
the Oracle Solaris 11 operating system. A single IPS command can update your image to a new
operating system release.
Once your application is built and ready for packaging, the first step in packing is to create a manifest
file. The manifest file provides basic metadata about the package, for example, name, version, category,
description, what files and directories are included, what dependencies need to be installed for the
package, and so on. In the manifest file, packages can also specify what services to restart after the