Advanced Installation

This procedure describes the contents of the downloaded distribution files and how these may be installed in various advanced scenerios including automatic (no user-input) installs.

Each binary distribution archive (the file you download which ends in .sh) is a self-contained self-extracting script. The top part of this file contains a sh(1) script which automatically unpacks the distribution files which are stored as a compressed (usually with bzip2(1)) tar(1) (using GNU tar) image in the bottom part of the archive file. The distribution archive contains within itself the compression tool and GNU tar programs necessary to extract the distribution. You therefor do not need your own copy of GNU tar or bzip2(1).

One of the distribution files is a program called setup which is used to actually install and configure SysInfo™. When the distribution archive is run, it extracts the distribution files and executes setup unless certain command line options are used.

Obtaining a Distribution

Follow the instructions to Download the appropriate binary distribution for your system. You should have a file named mcsysinfo-5.1.4-GA-os-arch.sh e.g. For a SunOS SPARC distribution, the file would be called mcsysinfo-5.1.4-GA-sunos-sparc.sh.

See Contents of a Distribution

To see a list of available options which are supported by the self-extracting archive, run the following:

/bin/sh mcsysinfo-5.1.4-GA-os-arch.sh --help

Installation Options

To see a list of available options which are supported by the SysInfo™ setup program, run the following:

/bin/sh mcsysinfo-5.1.4-GA-os-arch.sh -- --help

Note the first -- option which tells the archive to pass all remaining arguments to the setup program.

Manual Extraction of Distribution

To extract the distribution into the directory /tmp/mcsysinfodist run the following:

/bin/sh mcsysinfo-5.1.4-GA-os-arch.sh --extract --target /tmp/mcsysinfodist

Automated (No User Input) Installation

If you wish to perform a automated, non-interactive installation which will not prompt for any information, run the following:

  1. Become user root by running su or logging in as root.

    su
    
  2. /bin/sh mcsysinfo-5.1.4-GA-os-arch.sh -- --confirm --acceptlicense --installdir dir
    
    where dir is the name of the directory where you want to install into. You may also want to use the --override option which will override any detected error conditions which would otherwise result in being prompted for a response.

    You can also specify which packages to install using --packages name1,name2,... where nameX is the name of a package. i.e. --packages base,config specifies the base and config packages. To obtain the list of valid package names, run the installation in interactive mode.