Solaris SVR4 package tools¶

Solaris’ legacy System V Release 4 packaging tools.

Documentation:

The suite spans several binaries: pkginfo (the read-only query tool, used as the main CLI), pkgadd and pkgrm.

Note

SVR4 packages come from local media or datastream files, not a network repository: there is no catalog to search, refresh or diff against, and pkgadd installs a specific local artifact rather than resolving a name. Only installed and remove are therefore implemented; Solaris 11’s modern repository-based interface is IPS (pkg), a different manager.

Home page: https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E86824_01/html/E54763/pkginfo-1.html
Source: meta_package_manager/managers/sun_tools.py

Platforms¶

⨂ Unix (Solaris only)

Operations¶

Operation	Supported
`installed`	✓
`outdated`
`search`
`install`
`upgrade`
`upgrade_all`
`remove`	✓
`sync`
`cleanup`

Ecosystem¶

Accepted purl types: pkg:sun-tools

Usage¶

$ mpm --sun-tools installed

Every example above accepts --dry-run, which simulates the underlying manager calls without touching the system: the safe way to watch what mpm would do before trusting it.

Deselect the manager for a single run with --no-sun-tools, disable it from your configuration, or tune its invocation attributes with per-manager overrides.

Command line¶

CLI names, in lookup order: pkginfo
Extra CLI search paths: /usr/sbin

The version is probed by running:

$ uname -r
5.11

and extracted with:

r"(?P<version>[\d.]+)"

Privilege escalation¶

System-wide manager: mpm wraps its privileged operations in sudo out of the box. Instead of letting the tool prompt mid-run, mpm primes the credential cache up-front, with a single branded password prompt at most. Turn escalation off for rootless setups with --no-sudo or the per-manager sudo override.

See privilege escalation for the full policy.

Cooldown¶

State of Solaris SVR4 package tools’s release-age gating, from the cooldown support table:

Status: ➖ N/A (legacy SVR4 tooling superseded by IPS)
Reference: Oracle: SVR4/IPS comparison

Reference traces¶

Raw native outputs captured in the manager source: the reference mpm’s parsers were written against. If you know Solaris SVR4 package tools well and a transcript below looks wrong, or a newer release changed its output format, report it.

$ pkginfo -l
  PKGINST:  SUNWcar
      NAME:  Core Architecture, (Root)
  CATEGORY:  system
      ARCH:  i386.i86pc
   VERSION:  11.10.0,REV=2005.01.21.16.34
   BASEDIR:  /
    VENDOR:  Oracle Corporation
    STATUS:  completely installed