Solaris 11 packages

With Solaris 11 Oracle takes a new approach to package management by introducing Image Packaging System (IPS) as a replacement of the old SVR4 packages used in previous versions. According to Oracle, IPS packages have the following characteristics:

an IPS package is a collection of directories, files, links, drivers, dependencies, groups, users, and license information in a defined format. This collection represents the installable objects of a package.

IPS was designed to cope with the complete life cycle of software, addressing software packaging, deployment and installation, updates, system upgrades, and removal of software packages.

IPS is also tightly integrated with ZFS, and uses ZFS features (such as snapshots and clones) to minimize risk and downtime associated with maintenance.

an IPS package is made up of a series of actions which are described in the manifest of a package. Actions are used for defining the files and directories of the package, setting package attributes, declaring dependencies on other packages, creating users and groups, and installing device drivers. Actions represent the installable objects on a system.

IPS metadata

Each IPS package is represented by a Fault Management Resource Identifier (FMRI). The FMRI includes descriptive information about the package, such as the publisher of the package, package name, version information, and date.

Example for pkg: //solaris/library/libc@5.11,5.11-0.75:20071001T163427Z:

Scheme: pkg

Publisher: solaris

Category: library

Package name: libc

Version string

	Component version: 5.11

	Build version: 5.11

	Branch version: 0.75	

	Time the package was published, in ISO-8601 basic format: 20071001T163427Z

Prerequisites to Solaris IPS package management

In order to remediate IPS packages to a managed server you need to have the package dependencies available in SA.