[OpenIndiana-discuss] pkg and local zones

[Peter Tribble]

On Wed, Feb 19, 2014 at 11:18 AM, Jim Klimov <jimklimov at cos.ru> wrote:

> One of nice features about legacy (SVR4) zones was that one could
> use pkgadd to install or update packages to the same version in
> all installed or running zones.
>
> One of nice features about ipkg zones is that every operating
> environment is pretty much individual and changes in one do not
> necessarily influence another (except updates to illumos-gate
> which require cloning and update).
>
> However, every now and then I need to install some package into
> all zones. While I can parse the "zoneadm list" output and find
> zoneroots and ask pkg(5) to install into the altroots,


Would running pkg via zlogin be better?


> it is a
> bit clunky, so I wonder if I missed some option to just have the
> pkg(5) program itself install the named package into all available
> local zones?
>
> If not, does this sound like a worthwhile RFE for those who can
> do and don't know what to do next? :^)
>

When reimplementing zones for Tribblix (where I have both legacy
whole/sparse zones and the ipkg-style independent zones) I
steered away from the old SVR4 behaviour of controlling packages
(after zone installation)  from the global zone. It adds horrendous
complexity to the packaging system. It's far better to loop over a list
of zones and run the packaging commands in each zone than to do
it from the global zone. (And that way you can manipulate an arbitrary
subset of zones depending on need. Besides, combining simpler
commands is the unix way.)

-- 
-Peter Tribble
http://www.petertribble.co.uk/ - http://ptribble.blogspot.com/