Learning To Install Open Source Software on Solaris and HP-UX

This summer I bought an Ultra 30 workstation and an HP Visualize B2000 workstation to learn Solaris on SPARC and HP-UX on PA-RISC, respectively. Today I worked on installing open source software on each. Starting with the Sun box running Solaris 8 on SPARC, I visited Sun Freeware, an absolutely incredible site providing free compiled binary packages of key open source software. Here's a sample installation:

1. FTP to the Sunfreeware site to retrieve the package for bash
2. Unzip the package with 'gzip -d'
3. Install the package with 'pkgadd -d'

I later installed wget, which made step one much easier. I was even able to install OpenSSH using the site's instructions, which outlined step-by-step the actions needed to install a necessary Solaris patch, then grab the required packages, create keys, and so forth. I made my own startup script using ideas from the instructions:

#!/bin/sh
#
# Simple OpenSSH start script by Richard Bejtlich

SSHCONF=/usr/local/etc/openssh/sshd_config

case "$1" in
 start)
  echo "Starting sshd using $SSHCONF."
  /usr/local/sbin/sshd -f $SSHCONF
  echo "Done."
 ;;
 stop)
  echo "Killing sshd."
  kill `ps -elf | grep /usr/local/sbin/sshd | grep -v grep | awk '{print $4}'`
  echo "Done."
 ;;
 restart)
  $0 stop
  $0 start
 ;;
esac

For my HP-UX needs, I visited another awesome site -- the Software Porting And Archive Centre for HP-UX. They offered all the packages I needed, but before installing them I needed to get my HP-UX box to finish its boot process. It was hanging while looking for an NFS server, so I followed the directions here to fix it:

1. Enter single user mode by booting and hit 'ESC' to interrupt the boot process.
2. Enter 'boot pri isl'
3. Say 'y' to interact with ISL
4. At ISL prompt enter 'hpux -is boot'
5. In single user mode, mount the following filesystems: /usr and /var
6. Edit with 'vi' /etc/rc.config.d/nfsconf and say 'NFS_CLIENT=0'
7. 'reboot'

At the HP-UX site, I downloaded HP-UX's version of packages, called "depots". For example:

1. FTP to the HP-UX site to retrieve the package.
2. Unzip the package with 'gzip -d' into /usr/local/depot.
3. Run 'swinstall -s /usr/local/depot/<.depot file>'

swinstall when used through a Telnet session is a curses-like package installer. Eventually I installed OpenSSH and used the model for Solaris to get it to work on HP-UX.

Thank goodness for these free repositories of open source software! Would you believe there isn't a "top" command included with Solaris 8? I was able to install it from Sunfreeware, though.

I considered the day a success when I had GCC, wget, bash, and OpenSSH on both boxes, along with all of their dependencies. When I retrieve my AIX box from work I plan to use Bull Freeware to install OpenSSH and other programs. I also found AIX freeware at Darren Tucker's OpenSSH page and the UCLA Public Domain Software Library for AIX. The Encap Archive offers its own package format but lots of software.

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