Solaris 9 4/03 Release

The following list describes new features and changes to this book for the Solaris 9 4/03 release.

• The Solaris Flash installation feature provides new enhancements for this Solaris release.

  • A Solaris Flash installation can now update a clone system with minor changes. If you have a clone system and want to update it with minor changes, you can create a differential archive that contains only the differences between two images, the original master image and an updated master image. When you update a clone system with a differential archive, only the files specified in the differential archive are changed. The installation is restricted to clone systems that contain software consistent with the original master image. You use the custom JumpStart installation method to install a differential archive on a clone system. For procedures on creating a differential archive, see To Update a Master Image and Create a Differential Archive.

  • Special scripts can now be run for configuration of the master or clone or run to validate the archive. These scripts enable you to do the following tasks.

    • Configure applications on clone systems. You can use a custom JumpStart script for some uncomplicated configurations. For more complicated configurations, special configuration file processing might be necessary on the master system or before or after installation on the clone system. Also, local preinstallation and postinstallation scripts can reside on the clone and protect local customizations from being overwritten by the Solaris Flash software.

    • Identify non-clonable, host-dependent data that enables you to make the flash archive host independent. Host independence is enabled by modifying such data or excluding it from the archive. An example of host-dependent data is a log file.

    • Validate software integrity in the archive during creation

    • Validate the installation on the clone system

    For information on creating scripts, see Creating Customization Scripts.

• In the Solaris 9 4/03 operating environment, the Solaris Web Start and suninstall installation programs use a new default boot-disk partition layout to accommodate the Service partition on x86–based systems. If your system currently includes a Service partition, the new default boot-disk partition layout enables you to preserve this partition.

  For more information, see x86: Change in Default Boot-Disk Partition Layout.

• Minor changes were made to fix bugs.