What

• Give the ability to log into a Solaris autoinstall, as the install is happening.

Why

• This allows you to log in, and see how an install is progressing, remotely.
• This allows you to do things with the system filesystems, that you couldn't when they are mounted - EG, formatting a system disk
• If your install fails (say, the autoinstall system doesn't like your partitioning), you can reinitiate the install remotely

How (Note: this worked on Solaris 9, but not Solaris 8)

• Set up accounts in /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow
• Set up steld:
  • Add a services entry to /etc/services
  • Copy a steld binary to /usr/sbin
  • Add steld to /etc/inet/inetd.conf (just copy the telnet line, replace telnet stuff with stel stuff, and you probably want "tcp" instead of "tcp6").
• Set up /etc/rc2 to run /etc/rc2.d/S72inetsvc (this starts up inetd)
• Make /sbin/startinstall run /etc/rc2

Notes

• I also copied in a bash, so we have decent command line editing