Thursday, 21 August 2008
Opensolaris managing failed package installs
I just switched my laptop to run OpenSolaris, Sun's free Unix-alike OS. So far it is a success. There is still a lot to be done, and one of those is the IPS package system. It fails too often to my taste. This article is about how to clean up after a broken IPS installation.
Basics of IPS' pkg tool
You can use pkg authority -H to list the repositories currently added. You add repositories using pkg set-authority -O url name. Some good repositories I use, in addition to the default repository, are:
To find packages to install, you use pkg search -r keyword, and install using pkg install packagename, or alternatively, you use the GUI under System -> Administration -> Package manager.
Installing and failure
So far so good. Now we want to look at what happens when something fails. First you get something like this ...
sorend@kovuru:~/Desktop/tmp$ pfexec pkg install IPSgvim
DOWNLOAD PKGS FILES XFER (MB)
Completed 58/58 5727/5727 121.15/121.15
PHASE ACTIONS
Install Phase 14778/15536 A
ction install failed for 'opt/csw/lib/i386' (pkg://blastwave/IPScommon):
OSError: [Errno 1] Not owner: '//opt/csw/lib/i386'
pkg: An unexpected error happened during installation: [Errno 1] Not owner: '//opt/csw/lib/i386'
The Boot Environment opensolaris failed to be updated. A snapshot was taken before the failed attempt and is mounted here /tmp/tmpYXxKFN.
Use 'beadm unmount opensolaris_static:-:2008-08-21-13:32:22' and then 'beadm activate opensolaris_static:-:2008-08-21-13:32:22'
if you wish to boot to this BE.
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/bin/pkg", line 1734, in ?
ret = main_func()
...
To clean up, first you need to cleanup the Boot Environment (BE), this can be done with the beadm command. Check which BE's are available using the command beadm list.
sorend@kovuru:~/Desktop/tmp$ beadm list
BE Active Active on Mountpoint Space
Name reboot Used
---- ------ --------- ---------- -----
opensolaris_static:-:2008-08-21-13:32:22 no no /tmp/tmpYXxKFN 75.5K
opensolaris yes yes legacy 4.55G
Here you can see there is a opensolaris_static* environment, this is the one you want to remove. If it has a mountpoint, then we need to unmount it first (yes, that is "unmount", not "umount"). You can do that with beadm unmount opensolaris_static:-:2008-08-21-13:32:22. After this has been done, you use beadm destroy opensolaris_static:-:2008-08-21-13:32:22. It will ask you to confirm to remove it, you just say yes :-)
After the you have destroyed the BE, there is still the ZFS snapshots that the BE used left. Those are not destroyed automatically, so you need to do that manually aswell. You can use zfs list to view the available ZFS containers.
sorend@kovuru:~/Desktop/tmp$ zfs list
NAME USED AVAIL REFER MOUNTPOINT
rpool 5.89G 43.3G 56.5K /rpool
rpool@install 19K - 55.5K -
rpool/ROOT 4.55G 43.3G 18K /rpool/ROOT
rpool/ROOT@install 15K - 18K -
rpool/ROOT/opensolaris 4.55G 43.3G 3.38G legacy
rpool/ROOT/opensolaris@install 128M - 2.48G -
rpool/ROOT/opensolaris@static:-:2008-08-21-13:32:22 2.75M - 3.38G -
rpool/ROOT/opensolaris/opt 1.04G 43.3G 962M /opt
rpool/ROOT/opensolaris/opt@install 73K - 3.60M -
rpool/ROOT/opensolaris/opt@static:-:2008-08-21-13:32:22 97.7M - 821M -
rpool/ROOT/opensolaris_static:-:2008-08-21-13:32:22 75.5K 43.3G 3.38G legacy
rpool/ROOT/opensolaris_static:-:2008-08-21-13:32:22/opt 0 43.3G 821M /opt
rpool/export 1.34G 43.3G 19K /export
rpool/export@install 15K - 19K -
rpool/export/home 1.34G 43.3G 1.34G /export/home
rpool/export/home@install 19K - 21K -
You see that there are some containers which have opensolaris_static* in their names. These are the ones you want to get rid of, and you can do that by the command zfs destroy containername. You do it for each of the snapshots. Thats it, you've cleaned up after a failed install.
I really hope they fix this to work better, since it is quite annoying, and the error messages are often hard to decipher.
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