JumpStart is a computer network installation tool set used by the Solaris

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also i ...

Usage

JumpStart is used to manage operating system installation in many

Information technology Information technology (IT) is the use of computers to create, process, store, retrieve, and exchange all kinds of Data (computing), data . and information. IT forms part of information and communications technology (ICT). An information te ...

environments (corporate and otherwise) where Solaris operating system computers are widely used. It can provide easier installation (minor setup on central server, then one command on an installation "client" system to start it installing). It also allows completely consistent system installation on many systems over time - each install can have exactly the same system configuration and software tools. Alternatively, different types of systems can be installed for different purposes, in each case with consistent installations for a given defined type. Tools used to manipulate JumpStart include JET, the JumpStart Enterprise Toolkit. Created by: Thomas Fritz in 1994, at Sun.

Structure

JumpStart consists of two main parts: network booting of a system, and then network installation. Network booting proceeds similarly to Solaris' standard network booting capabilities. A JumpStart and network booting server is set up on the same local network as the system(s) to be installed. Technically, the network boot and install servers can be separate functions, but they are typically the same system. Once a client system begins the JumpStart process, it then accesses the operating system component software packages stored on the JumpStart server, usually but not exclusively using

Network File System Network File System (NFS) is a distributed file system protocol originally developed by Sun Microsystems (Sun) in 1984, allowing a user on a client computer to access files over a computer network much like local storage is accessed. NFS, lik ...

. Those packages, and optionally additional tools or applications, are automatically installed, and then the system is rebooted. Some additional configuration may be manually performed, or the system's configuration may be set up completely automatically.

References

Solaris 10 Installation Guide: Network-Based Installations
{{Solaris Unix package management-related software Sun Microsystems software Booting Network booting Provisioning

Usage

Structure

See also

References