CSL: SST Installation
This page derived from a message sent from Joe Shamblin
to the SST e-mail list on Sep-09-1997. It describes the
process for installing a software package into the SST
filesystem, and then making the software available to the
user community.
The basic idea for the package system is to allow the
administrators to install programs in a central way so that users
will be able to add one path to get all of the installed software,
at least the stable stuff :-). Following that goal we use a system
that allows us to install all of the software in a central directory
and create links to the versions that we want to be available.
For example a program like emacs would be installed in
/usr/pkg/emacs-19.34. The contents of that directory would
look like the following:
wjs@login% ls /usr/pkg/emacs-19.34
bin/ com/ info/ libexec/ man/ share/
You will notice that this looks just like the /usr/local/
directory. That is so that when it is linked in there will be links in
the correct place; e.g., /usr/local/bin/emacs will be a link
to /usr/pkg/emacs-19.34/bin/emacs
wjs@login% ls -la /usr/local/bin/emacs
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root lab 31 Sep 9 04:15 /usr/local/bin/emacs
-> /auto/pkg/emacs-19.34/bin/emacs*
Perhaps going through an example will be helpful. Here is a
session of the installation of screen-3.7.4 in the
/auto/sst/pkg/ directory.
wjs@login% cd /var/tmp
wjs@login% ftp prep.ai.mit.edu
Connected to prep.ai.mit.edu.
220 aeneas FTP server (Version wu-2.4(3) Mon Jun 5 16:40:22 EDT 1995)
ready.
Name (prep.ai.mit.edu:wjs): ftp
331 Guest login ok, send your complete e-mail address as password.
Password:
230-Welcome, archive user!
ftp> cd pub/gnu
ftp> ls screen*
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for file list.
screen-3.7.2.tar.gz
226 Transfer complete.
remote: screen*
175 bytes received in 0.077 seconds (2.2 Kbytes/s)
ftp> bin
200 Type set to I.
ftp> get screen-3.7.4.tar.gz
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for screen-3.7.4.tar.gz
(388138 bytes).
local: screen-3.7.4.tar.gz remote: screen-3.7.4.tar.gz
388138 bytes received in 3.1 seconds (1.2e+02 Kbytes/s)
ftp> ftp> by
221 Goodbye.
wjs@login% /usr/local/bin/tar xvfz screen-3.7.4.tar.gz
[much deleted]
screen-3.7.4/doc/fdpat.ps
screen-3.7.4/doc/screen.info
screen-3.7.4/doc/screen.info-1
screen-3.7.4/doc/screen.info-2
wjs@login% cd screen-3.7.4
wjs@login% ./configure --prefix=/auto/sst/pkg/screen-3.7.4
this is screen version 3.7.4
checking for gcc
[much deleted]
creating Makefile
creating doc/Makefile
creating config.h
Now please check the pathnames in the Makefile and the user
configuration section in config.h.
Then type 'make' to make screen. Good luck.
wjs@login% make
AWK=gawk CC="gcc -O" srcdir=. sh ./comm.sh
CC="gcc -O" srcdir=. sh ./osdef.sh
AWK=gawk srcdir=. sh ./term.sh
gcc -c -I. -I. -O screen.c
[much deleted]
gcc -o screen screen.o ansi.o fileio.o mark.o misc.o resize.o socket.o
search.o tty.o term.o window.o utmp.o loadav.o putenv.o help.o termcap.o
input.o attacher.o pty.o process.o display.o comm.o kmapdef.o acls.o
-lcurses -lelf -lcrypt_d -lcrypt -lsec
cd doc; make screen.info
screen.info' is up to date.
wjs@login% make install
./etc/mkinstalldirs /auto/sst/pkg/screen-3.7.4/bin
[much deleted]
else true; fi; \
fi
wjs@login% ls /auto/sst/pkg
screen-3.7.4/
wjs@login% cd /auto/sst
wjs@login% ls
bin/ info/ man/ pkg/
wjs@login% lndir pkg/screen-3.7.4
pkg/screen-3.7.4/bin:
pkg/screen-3.7.4/man:
pkg/screen-3.7.4/man/man1:
pkg/screen-3.7.4/info:
(lndir
just creates a link for every file it finds in the directory where you
issue the command.)
Now users with /auto/sst/bin in their PATH will
be able to use the newly installed screen program.
There are a few ways to link in these programs. It would be pretty
easy to come up with a shell or perl script that removed the links
created by the lndir program, and link the new ones into
place. There are some existing programs such as:
stow (http://www.gnu.org/software/stow/stow.html
and
depot (http://andrew2.andrew.cmu.edu/depot/)
that do this, but these programs have their own shortcomings. It seems
something simple like using
lndir might be the best bet.
There is also the documentation to deal with. I have been trying to
install HTML documentation for all of the programs. In this specific
example I would create a directory
/auto/sst/pkg/screen-3.7.4/html/screen. After this was linked
in it would become /auto/sst/html/screen. This way people
know where to find the documents. So in this example, I would have used
the program texi2html to create the HTML documentation.
wjs@login% cd doc
wjs@login% ls
FAQ install.sh* screen.info-1
Makefile screen.1 screen.info-2
Makefile.in screen.info-3 screen.info-4
fdpat.ps screen.info screen.texinfo
wjs@login% texi2html screen.texinfo
wjs@login% ls
FAQ install.sh* screen.info-1 screen.texinfo
Makefile screen.1 screen.info-2 screen_toc.html
Makefile.in screen.html screen.info-3
fdpat.ps screen.info screen.info-4
wjs@login% mkdir /auto/sst/pkg/screen-3.7.4/html/screen
wjs@login% cp *.html !$
cp *.html /auto/sst/pkg/screen-3.7.4/html/screen
I would then have to relink this (usually I would have done this
before linking everything into place).
wjs@login% pwd
/auto/sst
wjs@login% lndir pkg/screen-3.7.4
wjs@login% ls
bin/ html/ info/ man/ pkg/
wjs@login% ls html
screen/
wjs@login% ls html/screen
screen.html@ screen_toc.html@
This process is identical on the SPARCs.
For those who are interested, the machines mount the sst
directories relating to their hardware. For the x86 machines, this
would be:
wjs@login% df .
/auto/sst ( minerva:/vol/vol1/sst/sparc-SunOS_5.8 )
This is done using a feature of the mount command that expands
certain variables. The line in the automount map,
/etc/auto_import, is:
sst -rw minerva:/vol/vol1/sst/${CPU}-${OSNAME}_${OSREL}
sparc SunOS 5.8
Therefore the machines always mount the correct /auto/sst/
directory.
There are still some issues to be addressed, like which packages
get linked in, how to keep the database of stuff up to date, how the
database will be handled, and many more items. This should provide
enough of an example for users to begin playing with this on their
own.
Please feel free to ask any questions about this process. All of
the administrators are on the mailing list, so you are likely to get a
very quick response.
