On Wed, Nov 19, 2003, Birger Kr�gelin wrote:
> Status right now:
>
> - Core Solaris installs from CD-1, gets armored and reboots
> - on reboot fetches additional Solaris packages from CD-2 via ftp
>   from a distribution server
> - bootstraps OpenPKG binary via ftp
>   (packages reside in /opt/local, our preferred way to install open source)
>
Hello Birger,

I'm confident that you are administering your system perfectly well, but I
would like to warn you about mixing a OpenPKG software instance with a
foreign software hierarchy (/opt/local/).

OpenPKG will take over the subdirectories (bin, sbin, etc, var, libexec...)
changing directory ownership and permissions.

OpenPKG will overwrite any files already there, and will not know or warn
about filename conflicts with manually installed software there.

You might find some subdirectories (/opt/local/bin and so on) are totally
erased if you uninstall the OpenPKG instance in the future (rpm -e openpkg).
This I'm not 100% sure about, but could be tested easily.

OpenPKG packages are carefully written to use (almost) only libraries and
other software within OpenPKG control. This is a big advantage, but goes
away if the OpenPKG instance hierarchy is not pure OpenPKG.

So for these reasons and a few others, it is recommendable to allow OpenPKG
its own directory hierarchy. Of course it's okay to break this rule, but
you'll have to use your own reasoning how important the previous topics are
to your environment.

Regards,
Michael

-- 
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Development Team, Operations Northern Europe
Cable & Wireless Telecommunications Services GmbH

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