After toying around with OpenSolaris for a couple of months, I started wondering what it would take to slim down the default installation to something more appropriate for a server — You know, no X, GNOME, or any of the other good stuff. Some searching on Google lead me to some instructions for a minimal install of OpenSolaris 2008.11. Instead of starting out with a Live CD, I did a normal installation, booted in to that, and then followed these steps below (note: make sure to perform these tasks as either root or super-user).
Create new zfs volume and mount it in /a:
This will be the new root volume once we’re done installing our packages.
zfs create rpool/ROOT/opensolaris-minimal zfs set mountpoint=legacy rpool/ROOT/opensolaris-minimal zfs set canmount=noauto rpool/ROOT/opensolaris-minimal mkdir /a mount -F zfs rpool/ROOT/opensolaris-minimal
Create the install image:
export PKG_IMAGE=/a pkg image-create -F -a opensolaris.org=http://pkg.opensolaris.org $PKG_IMAGE pkg refresh
Once that’s setup, I use the same methodology from the guy mentioned in the above link:
Contents of pkg.txt:
SUNWcsd SUNWcs SUNWzone SUNWcsl SUNWlibsasl SUNWlibms SUNWpr SUNWlxml SUNWzlib SUNWtls SUNWopenssl SUNWpool SUNWzfs SUNWsmapi SUNWtecla SUNWckr SUNWpicl SUNWmd SUNWinstall-libs SUNWwbsup SUNWgccruntime SUNWcar SUNWcakr SUNWusbs SUNWusb SUNWaudd SUNWkvm SUNWos86r SUNWrmodr SUNWpsdcr SUNWpsdir SUNWcnetr SUNWesu SUNWkey SUNWnfsckr SUNWnfsc SUNWgss SUNWgssc SUNWbip SUNWbash SUNWloc SUNWsshcu SUNWsshd SUNWssh SUNWtoo SUNWzfskr SUNWipf SUNWrtls SUNWipkg SUNWpython-pyopenssl SUNWpython-cherrypy SUNWadmr SUNWadmap SUNWadmlib-sysid SUNWPython SUNWbzip SUNWxwrtl SUNWTk SUNWTcl SUNWlexpt SUNWperl584core SUNWinstall-libs SUNWbeadm SUNWvim SUNWscreen
Package installation:
for pkg in `cat pkg.txt`; do pkg install $pkg; done
And now for some initial configurations:
# seed the initial smf repository cp $PKG_IMAGE/lib/svc/seed/global.db $PKG_IMAGE/etc/svc/repository.db chmod 0600 $PKG_IMAGE/etc/svc/repository.db chown root:sys $PKG_IMAGE/etc/svc/repository.db # setup smf profiles ln -s ns_files.xml $PKG_IMAGE/var/svc/profile/name_service.xml ln -s generic_limited_net.xml $PKG_IMAGE/var/svc/profile/generic.xml ln -s inetd_generic.xml $PKG_IMAGE/var/svc/profile/inetd_services.xml ln -s platform_none.xml $PKG_IMAGE/var/svc/profile/platform.xml # mark the new system image as uninstalled sysidconfig -b $PKG_IMAGE -a /lib/svc/method/sshd touch $PKG_IMAGE/etc/.UNCONFIGURED # copy over the vfstab cp -p /etc/vfstab $PKG_IMAGE/etc/vfstab # copy over the current passwd, group, shadow, and user_attr to the new image cp -p /etc/passwd $PKG_IMAGE/etc/passwd cp -p /etc/shadow $PKG_IMAGE/etc/shadow cp -p /etc/user_attr $PKG_IMAGE/etc/user_attr cp -p /etc/group $PKG_IMAGE/etc/group # copy of my existing host sshd keys cp -p /etc/ssh/*key* $PKG_IMAGE/etc/ssh # configure /dev in the new image devfsadm -r $PKG_IMAGE ln -s ../devices/pseudo/sysmsg@0:msglog $PKG_IMAGE/dev/msglog # copy the grub files rsync -avr --progress /boot/grub $PKG_IMAGE/boot/ # update the boot archive in the new image bootadm update-archive -R $PKG_IMAGE # update to the latest version of grub (this command generated # some errors which i ignored). $PKG_IMAGE/boot/solaris/bin/update_grub -R $PKG_IMAGE # change our active boot environment beadm activate opensolaris-minimal
Once that’s completed, I’ll also modify grub’s menu.lst file to disable the graphical boot sequences, here’s what the finished file will look like (/rpool/boot/grub/menu.lst):
#splashimage /boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz #background 215ECA timeout 30 default 0 #---------- ADDED BY BOOTADM - DO NOT EDIT ---------- #splashimage /boot/solaris.xpm #foreground d25f00 #background 115d93 #---------------------END BOOTADM-------------------- title opensolaris-minimal bootfs rpool/ROOT/opensolaris-minimal kernel$ /platform/i86pc/kernel/$ISADIR/unix -B $ZFS-BOOTFS module$ /platform/i86pc/$ISADIR/boot_archive #============ End of LIBBE entry =============
After that, I’ll umount the volume (/a) and reboot the system. Once as soon as I know that everything installed properly, I’ll use the beadm command to destroy the old boot environment, leaving me with a minimal(ish) install of OpenSolaris!
