The first thing that you need to do when you have to install new software is... check if the software is already installed. I know, this seems stupid to say, but if you take a look at the machines, you will see that there are softwares that have been installed many and many times, from different peoples and in different positions. This results in a mess and in a lot of space wasted.
In general, is a good idea to encourage people not to install software by themselves but to ask the administrator to do that. The software may be usefull also to others, may be already installed, etc.
To check if a software is installed you can try to call it (if you know the name of the executable). Or you can try to find it (go to the root directory and use the command find . -n sftw_exec_name, it can take a while though). Or you can ckeck if a package regarding that software has been installes. To do that use the pkginfo command. This produces a list of all the packages installed. Look for something similar to what you need. If you find it, you will see that the command returns you the package name. You can than use the command pkginfo -l pkgname to obtain more information about the package. For example you can discover where it has been installed and in case fix the things such that people can run it.
If the software as not been installed on any machine (check all of them) you may have several opportunities:
Whatever solutions, you will have to decide where to install it. As a suggestion, if the application is small you can install it under /usr/local on Piemonte. Doing so it wil be immediately available on all the machines. Also, most application are thought to be installed in such directory therefore the installation process will be simpler. On the other hand, if the application is kind of big, it is better to install it under /export/lab that has more free space. You will need to pay more attention to the installation process and to fix things afterward to allow other machine to run the programm (for example, you may need to add link to the executable in the /usr/local/bin directory of each machine).
If the software comes as a Solaris package you can use the pkgadd command to install it. For example, suppose you have downloaded the latest version of the Bash shell. This will be a file like bash_1.1.tgz. Uncompress it where you want and then use the command:
/sbin/pkgadd -d dir
where dir is the directory where you have uncompressed the file. See the man pages to understand how to select a different location from the default for the installation.
Remember to update the page of this guide related to installed software, such that there will be a reference to the installed software.
Last Revised: 24 May 2003
Riccardo Serafin