The creation of a Solaris 11 repository is straight forward. Finding the related documentation isn't (status April 2011). The product name and domain names changed in the last year.

Step 1: Provide a Location in your File System for a IPS Repository

A simple and professional way is to create a new ZFS file system for a repository:

# zfs create /export/repo

We need super user privileges anyhow. The root of the repository will be in /export/repo.

Step 2: Configure the SMF Services for the pkg Server

2.1 Enable the SMF Service for the Server

This is a one time operation. The server will stay up on it's own since it get's managed through SMF. Reboots of the system will not make a difference.

# svcadm enable application/pkg/server

2.2 Configure Properties of the Server

Set the port of the server to 10000 (in this case). The following command configures the SMF property of the service

# svccfg -s application/pkg/server setprop pkg/port=10000

Configure the root file system (here /export/repo) in SMF for the server:

# svccfg -s application/pkg/server setprop pkg/inst_root=/export/repo

The server is by default in read-only mode. Setting the following SMF property allows to post packages:

# svccfg -s application/pkg/server setprop pkg/readonly=false

2.3 Configure a Name for the Repository

It is common to pick the domain name of the server as publisher (here repo.scalingbits.com)

# pkgrepo set -s /export/repo publisher/prefix=repo.scalingbits.com

2.4 Restart the entire Server

Refresh and restart the server for the repository with the hep of SMF:

# svcadm refresh application/pkg/server
# svcadm restart application/pkg/server

Step 3: Check the Configuration

Point the browser to your configured hostname and port. The following page should appear:

The root directory of the repository /export/repo should have a sub directory (here repo.scalingbits.com) as well.

The pkgrepo info command allows to check the state of the repository:

nsschneid@solarisB163:~# pkgrepo info -s http://repo.scalingbits.com:10000
PUBLISHER            PACKAGES STATUS           UPDATED
repo.scalingbits.com 0        online           2011-04-18T13:43:04.374125Z

... shows a healthy repository without any packages installed.

Other Resources

Some more pointers I found:

• OpenSolaris documentation on sun.com
• A youtube.com video from OracleWebVideo
• A blog entry from Michal Pryc on blogs.sun.com
• A blog entry from "swinful" describing the installation of an iso image repository