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Originally Posted by BeekerC
I know there is a network booting option and there are the WebStart (configurable) and JumpStart (fully automated) installation methods. Bearing in mind, if this were Windows, I'd just use Ghost and be done with it.
Solaris actually has a similar mechanism, which is called flash images. You can use that to roll out a standardised installation to all you clients. Jumpstart will automatically do the basic host reconfiguration for you (ip address/hostname etc) and the remainder you can deal with in you finish scripts.
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1) Does an boot/install machine have to be SPARC? can I run a boot/install server under Linux or Windows?
It does not have to be a SPARC, and in theory couls be a linux machine, however it is difficult to get jumpstart working with linux. If you don't want to 'waste' a sparc machine for it then the best option is to use and x86 machine with Solaris x86 which will work perfectly well for the purpose.
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2) Can a boot/install machine serve up both WebStart and JumpStart installations?
Yes, but I really can't think of any reason you'd want to, but that's just my opinion. If you try to jumpstart a client and you have an incomplete or incorrect profile configured for that machine then it will default to an interactive install. In fact if you hav a client configured on jumpstart ans dor "boot net" and not "boot net - install" you will get the interactive installation program.
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3) Can a boot/intsall machine contain multiple versions of Solaris (say 8, 9 and 10) and allow me to select which one I want to install at boot time?
Yes, to multiple versions on the same machine, that is not a problem at all. For an install time option to select which os you want I suggest you look into using flash jumpstart, and then make changes to the rcS script in your boot image to handle taking an extra boot option, so that for example your boot comman would become "boot net - install solaris=solaris10" or something similar. The only other option would be to change the bootparam configuration on your machine before jumping to a different version.
In summary jumpstart is a very versatile deployment mechanism for Solaris, and really it is the only one I would suggest you use for deployment or redeployment of Sparc clients.
see these documents for more details:
jumpstart blueprints
