Meet pkgutil - installer of Solaris and OpenSolaris packages at BlastWave

On my Solaris 10 x86 desktop, I find I need a viewer for pdf file. Since Adobe Reader for Solaris x86 is not yet available (it's known to become available this year!), my choice would be xpdf, or evince or QuickTransit. After brief consideration, I have decided for xpdf.

 My place to go is Blastwave.org, where users can download a boatload of free software for Solaris x86/64.  The gist of using software from this site is using a utility called pkgutil, another Solaris package that aids installation of software packages listed on this site.  Refer here for details of usage.

 First download pkgutil package:

% su -
# /usr/sfw/bin/wget  http://blastwave.network.com/csw/pkgutil_`/sbin/uname -p`.pkg
# pkgadd -d `pwd`/pkgutil_`/sbin/uname -p`.pkg
    This will install under /opt/csw/bin directory, so set the root path to include this path.
    Alternatively, you can use pkgadd directly:
# pkgadd -d http://blastwave.network.com/csw/pkgutil_`/sbin/uname -p`.pkg
    Both method will install the application under /opt/csw/bin directory, so set the root path to include this path.

Then find on the blastwave page, find the package name for the software of interest. "Software list" link is on the left hand side of the page. For xpdf, it's CSWxpdf.

Next step is installing directly on the system using pkgutil.

% su -
# /opt/csw/bin/pkgutil -i CSWxpdf
    This will install the package and related necessary packages under /opt/csw/bin directory.
% which xpdf
/opt/csw/bin/xpdf

Now, xpdf is ready to use, until the date when Adobe Reader becomes available on Solaris x86.

Likewise, every other application listed on the Blastwave site is at your finger tip with simple package utility. Happy Solaris computing!

Posted at 10:32PM Mar 11, 2009 by younseoroh in Solaris  |  Comments[0]