Solaris Express Installation Guide: Planning for Installation and Upgrade
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Allocating Disk and Swap Space

Before you install the Solaris software, you can determine if your system has enough disk space by doing some high-level planning.

General Disk Space Planning and Recommendations

Planning disk space is different for everyone. Consider allocating space for the following conditions, depending on your needs.

Table 4-3 General Disk Space and Swap Space Planning

Conditions for Space Allocations

Description

File systems

For each file system that you create, allocate an additional 30 percent more disk space than you need to enable you to upgrade to future Solaris versions.

By default, the Solaris installation methods create only root (/) and /swap. When space is allocated for OS services, the /export directory is also created. If you are upgrading to a major Solaris release, you might need to reslice your system or allocate double the space that you need at installation time. If you are upgrading to an update, you could prevent having to reslice your system by allocating extra disk space for future upgrades. A Solaris update release needs approximately 10 percent more disk space than the previous release. You can allocate an additional 30 percent of disk space for each file system to allow space for several Solaris updates.

The /var file system

If you intend to use the crash dump feature savecore(1M), allocate double the amount of your physical memory in the /var file system.

Swap

The Solaris installation program allocates a default swap area of 512 MB under the following conditions:

  • If you use the installation program's automatic layout of disk slices

  • If you avoid manually changing the size of the swap slice

By default, the Solaris installation programs allocate swap space by placing swap so that it starts at the first available disk cylinder (typically cylinder 0 on SPARC based systems). This placement provides maximum space for the root (/) file system during the default disk layout and enables the growth of the root (/) file system during an upgrade.

If you think you might need to expand the swap area in the future, you can place the swap slice so that it starts at another disk cylinder by using one of the following methods.

For an overview of the swap space, see Chapter 20, Configuring Additional Swap Space (Tasks), in System Administration Guide: Devices and File Systems.

A server that is providing home directory file systems

By default, home directories are usually located in the /export file system.

The Solaris software group you are installing

A software group is a grouping of software packages. When you are planning disk space, remember that you can add or remove individual software packages from the software group that you select. For information about software groups, see Disk Space Recommendations for Software Groups.

Upgrade

Language support

For example, Chinese, Japanese, or Korean. If you plan to install a single language, allocate approximately 0.7 GB of additional disk space for the language. If you plan to install all language supports, you need to allocate up to approximately 2.5 GB of additional disk space for the language supports, depending on the software group you install.

Printing or mail support

Allocate additional space.

Additional software or third-party software

Allocate additional space.

Disk Space Recommendations for Software Groups

The Solaris software groups are collections of Solaris packages. Each software group includes support for different functions and hardware drivers.

  • For an initial installation, you select the software group to install, based on the functions that you want to perform on the system.

  • For an upgrade, you must upgrade to a software group that is installed on the system. For example, if you previously installed the End User Solaris Software Group on your system, you cannot use the upgrade option to upgrade to the Developer Solaris Software Group. However, during the upgrade you can add software to the system that is not part of the currently installed software group.

When you are installing the Solaris software, you can choose to add or remove packages from the Solaris software group that you selected. When you are selecting which packages to add or remove, you need to know about software dependencies and how the Solaris software is packaged.

The following figure shows the grouping of software packages. Reduced Network Support contains the minimal number of packages and Entire Solaris Software Group Plus OEM Support contains all the packages.

Figure 4-1 Solaris Software Groups
The context describes the illustration.

Table 4-4 lists the Solaris software groups and the recommended amount of disk space that you need to install each group.


Note - The disk space recommendations in Table 4-4 include space for the following items.

  • Swap space

  • Patches

  • Additional software packages

You might find that the software groups require less disk space than the amount that is listed in this table.


Table 4-4 Disk Space Recommendations for Software Groups

Software Group

Description

Recommended Disk Space

Entire Solaris Software Group Plus OEM Support

Contains the packages for the Entire Solaris Software Group plus additional hardware drivers, including drivers for hardware that is not on the system at the time of installation.

6.8 GB

Entire Solaris Software Group

Contains the packages for the Developer Solaris Software Group and additional software that is needed for servers.

6.7 GB

Developer Solaris Software Group

Contains the packages for the End User Solaris Software Group plus additional support for software development. The additional software development support includes libraries, include files, man pages, and programming tools. Compilers are not included.

6.6 GB

End User Solaris Software Group

Contains the packages that provide the minimum code that is required to boot and run a networked Solaris system and the Common Desktop Environment.

5.3 GB

Core System Support Software Group

Contains the packages that provide the minimum code that is required to boot and run a networked Solaris system.

2.0 GB

Reduced Network Support Software Group

Contains the packages that provide the minimum code that is required to boot and run a Solaris system with limited network service support. The Reduced Network Support Software Group provides a multiuser text-based console and system administration utilities. This software group also enables the system to recognize network interfaces, but does not activate network services.

2.0 GB

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