[OpenIndiana-discuss] Installing Hipster

[Peter Tribble]

On Thu, Jun 9, 2016 at 3:46 PM, Udo Grabowski (IMK) <udo.grabowski at kit.edu>
wrote:

> A seemingly very simple question:
>
>   - How to install a fresh (nonupdate) complete new Hipster
>     instance from an old /dev OI into a new BE ?
>
> Tried hard, but it seems that this is impossible to do without
> rebooting into the new BE. All attempts end with pkg referring
> to installed packages of the running system (and denying because
> of conflicting packages, etc.pp....). We just want a pristine
> /hipster on its own zfs filesystem without changing or halting
> the running system.


I've implemented a couple of variants of this idea for Tribblix.

1. Boot from live media and have an alternative installer that differs
from the normal installer in that it uses the existing rpool rather than
creating a new one. The advantage of this method is that you're using
the same bits to do the install that you're actually installing, which
greatly simplifies matters.

2. Install a zone from an arbitrary ISO. (In practice, the script has to
know how each distro builds the ISO, so it's not entirely arbitrary.)
The script I use is at the URL below, you could probably modify it
to install into an alternate BE - about the only change you would
need is to not delete /boot /kernel and /devices. You then need to
fiddle the grub menu. And I'm not sure whether the manual removal
of the live image piece is correct for hipster, as the last time I ran this
for OI was pre-hipster. Note that I never invoke pkg at all.

https://github.com/tribblix/tribblix-zones/blob/master/usr/lib/brand/alien-root/live-iso-unpack

So it's possible, but will probably involve some fiddling.

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