NAME

start_applic − generic application startup procedures

SYNOPSIS

/usr/etc/start_applic

AVAILABILITY

Sun386i systems only. 

DESCRIPTION

start_applic is a short generic shell script that can be copied or symbolically linked into either /vol/local/bin/application or /usr/local/bin/application. When invoked as application, an application installed as described below will be correctly invoked on systems of any supported processor architecture.  Installing start_applic (or a customized version of it) in one of these locations ensures that no user’s or system’s environment needs to be modified just to run the application.  Applications are stored in a single tree, not shared with any other applications.  This tree may be available on different systems in different places; if the application needs to reference its distribution tree, this should be determined from the $application_ROOT environment variable. 

The application startup script arranges that the $PATH and $application_ROOT environment variables are set correctly while the application is running.  If the application’s distribution tree (placed into /vol/application or /usr/local/application) doesn’t have an executable binary with the name of the application (e.g.  /vol/application/bin.arch/application) then start_applic can not be used, and a customized application startup script must be used instead.  Such scripts must also allow users to invoke the application from systems of any architecture, without requiring them to customize their own environments. 

Heterogeneous Networked Installations

Applications available on the network are available through /vol/application and exported either to all systems or just to selected ones, as licensing restrictions allow.  The export point is /export/vol/application, which is a symbolic link to the actual installation point, typically the /files/vol/application directory.  All subdirectories not explicitly tagged with a processor architecture are shared among all processor architectures; thus while the .../bin.sun386 and .../lib.sun386 subdirectories contain respectively binaries and libraries executable only on systems of the sun386 architecture, the .../bin directory contains executables that run on any architecture (typically using an interpreter such as /bin/sh), and the .../etc directory only contains sharable configuration files. 

Homogeneous Single Machine Installations

Applications available only on a specific machine and its boot clients of the same architecture are installed into /usr/local/application. This directory supports only a single architecture; this means that /usr/local/application/bin contains binaries executable only on the local architecture, and /usr/local/application/lib contains libraries executable only on the local architecture.  Any sharable files may be grouped in /usr/local/application/share. 

If an application is to be installed onto a boot server with the intent of serving it to boot clients with architectures other than the server’s native one, it will appear on all of those systems in /usr/local/application as described above.  However, the installation point (on the server) for application binaries of architecture arch is /export/local/arch/application. (When the architecture is the server architecture, this case is identical with the one above.) 

Other Installations

Note that these are two contrasting models of software installation.  The heterogeneous model assumes general availability of the software, and solves the “which binaries to use” problem with no administrative overhead.  The homogeneous model assumes very limited availability of software, requires administrative procedures to ensure that /usr/local only contains binaries of the local architecture, and doesn’t really account for networked installations.  It is easier to add support for additional architectures using a heterogeneous network model of software installation from the beginning. 

Smaller applications (of only one or two files) may be installed into the appropriate /vol/local/bin.arch directory, or possibly into /export/local/arch/bin.  These directories are in user’s default paths, so the application does not need to be registered using start_applic . 

FILES

/files<n>/vol/application

/export/vol/application

/vol/application

/vol/application/bin.arch/application

/usr/local/application

/export/local/arch/application

SEE ALSO

automount(8), auto.vol(5), exportfs(8), exports(5)
 

Sun Release 4.0  —  Last change: