Creating Local IPS Repository in Oracle Solaris 11.1

A repository is a location where the clients publish and retrieve packages. There are two ways to obtain copy of Oracle Solaris 11.1 IPS (Image Packaging System) repository image, one method is to download the repository image from the Oracle Solaris 11 Website, create a local repository and the second method is to retrieve the repository directly from the internet. Here we dont have internet, hence we will go with creating a local repository.

Concatenate the downloaded repository files “sol-11_1-repo-full.iso-a” and “sol-11_1-repo-full.iso-b” to “sol-11_1-repo-full.iso”. Execute the below command to do the same.

huser@nn:~$ cat sol-11_1-repo-full.iso-a sol-11_1-repo-full.iso-b > sol-11_1-repo-full.iso

Mount the repository iso image to /mnt directory.

huser@nn:~$ sudo lofiadm -a /mnt/sf_ISOs/sol-11_1-repo-full.iso

huser@nn:~$ lofiadm

Specify the lofiadm device from the “lofiadm” command output to mount the image.

huser@nn:~$ sudo mount -F hsfs /dev/lofi/1 /mnt

Now we will create a zfs dataset for package repository. We have disabled atime to improve the performance during repo updates and enabled compression.

huser@nn:~$ sudo zfs create -o mountpoint=/SoLoRepo/ -o atime=off -o compression=on rpool/SoLoRepo

Copy and synchronize all the files in the repository to the mountpoint we created for the repository using “rsync”.

huser@nn:~$ sudo rsync -aPvz /temp/ /SoLoRepo/

Next we will configure the web interface for the clients to access the repository. The “svc:/application/pkg/server” is a depot server for IPS. We will use port 8080 to listen to request from clients to access data contained on package repository. The “/application/pkg/server” is not enabled by default in a fresh Solaris 11 installation.

To enable clients to access the local repository via HTTP, let’s configure and enable the “svc:/application/pkg/server” using SMF service. We will configure three properties namely “inst_root” to specify the repository directory, default is /var/pkg/repo; “readonly” and “port”.

huser@nn:~$ sudo svccfg -s application/pkg/server setprop pkg/inst_root=/SoLoRepo/repo/

huser@nn:~$ sudo svccfg -s application/pkg/server setprop pkg/readonly=true

huser@nn:~$ sudo svccfg -s application/pkg/server setprop pkg/port=8080

To confirm the value of properties, use the below command.

huser@nn:~$ svccfg -s pkg/server listprop | egrep "inst_root|readonly|port"

Refresh and enable the “application/pkg/server” service

huser@nn:~$ sudo svcadm -v refresh application/pkg/server

huser@nn:~$ sudo svcadm -v enable application/pkg/server

To confirm the above activity, execute the below command.

huser@nn:~$ svcs application/pkg/server

Set the publisher to get the packages from local repository

huser@nn:~$ sudo pkg set-publisher -P -g /SoLoRepo/repo/ solaris

huser@nn:~$ sudo pkg set-publisher -g http://nn:8080 solaris

huser@nn:~$ pkg publisher

Verifying the port

huser@nn:~$ netstat -an | grep 8080

*.8080 *.* 0 0 128000 0 LISTEN

huser@nn:~$

Access to repository can be tested using a browser, pointing to http://nn:8080

Everything being set we will unmount the /temp directory and delete the lofi device.

Unmount the /temp directory and delete the lofi device.

huser@nn:~$ umount /mnt

huser@nn:~$ lofiadm -d /dev/lofi/1

We will try installing terminator (I will need it later) package using our local repository to test it.

Finally, our Oracle Solaris 11.1 local repository has been created, up and running using SMF, and is made available using HTTP and local ZFS.