Packaging your software applications

Quick steps to network installation

Below are the basic steps to follow to set up a network installation server from the command line.

A package image can also be made available for network installation through the Install Server graphical installation tool (see ``Setting up and administering an install server'').

Put something in the network installation distribution area (/var/spool/dist) to offer for network install.
For example, you can copy a package image from a development area on your local hard disk, a network drive, or from a mounted CD. The following example mounts a CD and copies a file system format package image from it to /var/spool/dist.
```
   mount -F cdfs -r /dev/cdrom/cdrom1 /mnt
   cp -r /mnt/pkgname /var/spool/dist
```
If the image on CD is a datastream image, you can omit the -r option to the cp command, and specify the name of the file containing the datastream as pkgname.
If you need to change the format of the installable image, you can copy and change it's format in one command using the pkgtrans(1) command. To go from datastream to file system format:
```
   pkgtrans /mnt/datastream /var/spool/dist pkgname
```
To go from file system to datastream format:
```
   pkgtrans -s /mnt /var/spool/dist/pkgname.ds pkgname
```
NOTE: You will most often want to use file system format for the packages you place under /var/spool/dist, so that remote users can find out what packages are available for installation from the server without having to know any file names in advance. Users need to know the name of a datastream file in order to install from it. If you place a datastream under /var/spool/dist, it's name will not be listed automatically by remote installers using either the pkglist or pkginstall commands, or by the Application Installer interface. See ``Network installation from the command line'' and ``Network installation from the graphical interface'' for more explanation.
Enable the installation server, specifying the appropriate network protocol (tcp or spx).
For example the following command enables the network installation of all the packages under /var/spool/dist using the tcp protocol.
```
   installsrv -e -n tcp
```
Note that the appropriate protocol must be enabled on your system, which must also be connected to a network of the appropriate type in order for it to be able to process non-local installation requests.
To ensure your server is configured properly, use the pkglist(1M) command to list the file system format packages it is offering for network install from /var/spool/dist:
```
   pkglist -s 0.0.0.0: all
```
For datastream format images, use a command like the following, substituting the name of a datastream format file under /var/spool/dist for datastream:
```
   pkglist -s 0.0.0.0:datastream all
```

See ``Network installation from the command line'' and ``Network installation from the graphical interface'' for how to perform a network install from a target machine on the network.