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Deploying the Solaris Operating Environment Using a Solaris Security Toolkit CD

  • Oct 17, 2003
The Solaris Security Toolkit is a collection of shell scripts combined to form a flexible and extensible framework for rapidly deploying hardened platforms running the Solaris Operating Environment. The Toolkit is, however, quite versatile and can be used for much more than just hardening a system. This article discusses how the Toolkit can be used to construct a bootable CD, based on Sun's JumpStart framework, for building and configuring new systems. This article is authored for intermediate and advanced system administrators.
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This article describes how to construct a bootable Solaris™ Security Toolkit software CD, based on Sun's JumpStart framework, for building, configuring, and deploying new Solaris Operating Environment (Solaris OE) systems. This article is for intermediate and advanced users.

The Solaris Security Toolkit software is a collection of shell scripts combined to form a flexible and extensible framework for rapidly deploying hardened platforms running the Solaris OE. The Solaris Security Toolkit software is extremely versatile and can be used for much more than just hardening a system. By using the JumpStart framework and the Solaris Security Toolkit software, it is possible to rapidly deploy a hardened, secured system using a customized bootable CD with all the necessary installation, configuration, and patch cluster included.

This article contains the following topics:

  • "Determining Business Case"

  • "Obtaining Support"

  • "Creating a Build Specification"

  • "Building a Work Space"

  • "Installing the Solaris Security Toolkit"

  • "Customizing the Solaris Security Toolkit"

  • "Building a Customized, Bootable Installation"

  • "About the Author"

  • "Related Resources"

  • "Ordering Sun Documents"

  • "Accessing Sun Documentation Online"

Determining Business Case

The first task is to determine if building a customized, bootable Solaris Security Toolkit CD is right for your business case. We recommend that you consider the following:

  • Does your business use JumpStart™ technology?

  • Do you want to harden your systems in an automated way?

  • Are there Service Level Agreements (SLAs) with your customers?

In some organizations, SLAs require the uptime of environments. In the case of a catastrophic failure, it might be impossible to fulfill a customer's SLA for a specified amount of time to bring the systems back online. Using a Solaris Security Toolkit CD, you can rebuild environments in a short amount of time and fulfill their SLAs to bring customer systems back online.

When building and deploying systems running the Solaris OE using JumpStart technology, it is generally assumed that the client system has the ability to remotely access the installation and configuration data using the networked file system (NFS) service. The JumpStart server might not be accessible for many reasons. Sun Professional Services (SunPS) works with customers in environments where a JumpStart server is not available, is not accessible via NFS, or is being upgraded. Also, some customers are not using JumpStart technology in any capacity and are installing or upgrading their systems manually. Although it is possible to resolve some of these issues and wait to install a system, there are cases when a system must be deployed in a relatively short amount of time using other methods.

If your organization and customers would benefit from using a customized bootable Solaris Security Toolkit CD, use the Solaris Security Toolkit framework to build a customized distribution of the Solaris OE. Administrators can customize or add additional files and configurations that are specific to an environment. During an installation from a Solaris 8 Installation CD, an administrator can install the distribution and perform minimal customizing. However, the customizing to the system might occur after the installation, such as package addition, package removal, and/or hardening. Also, an installation from the Sun Microsystems Solaris 8 OE CD does not take into account any system hardening. These issues can be automated by building a customized, bootable CD by utilizing the JumpStart and Solaris Security Toolkit framework. This method saves administrators time and provides them with the flexibility of deploying a complete, hardened system with your customizing.

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