We had fun recently at a local company when setting up a Solaris 9 Jumpstart server. When installing a new client, it kept asking if we wanted to disable Power Management. Problem is, it was asking this question AT THE BEGINNING of the installation, and not at the end as usual. Everything was configured properly, we had the finish script to disable this question, but it still kept popping up.
Digging through all documentation that you never knew it existed, I found an interesting bit of information: Solaris Webstart (the new ways of installing programs introduced with Solaris 8 ) does indeed ask this question at the beginning, whereas the old and proven suninstall is the one that asks this question at the end. When you configure the Jumpstart server using the DVD it automatically downloads everything, including Webstart. And, by default you’ll run Webstart (if it was setup in the Jumpstart server) when executing the ‘boot net - install’ command from your client.

What makes me cringe is that apparently (at least I couldn’t find it in the documentation available to me) there is NO WAY of disabling it, preventing it from being installed in the Jumpstart server when configuring it from DVD, or telling the client to run suninstall instead of Webstart. The only way to circumvent it is to (*drums roll*) configure the Jumpstart from the CDs. When you configure Jumpstart using the CDs you can skip the infamous Solaris Installation CD, which contains the Webstart, and set it up using only the Software CDs 1 and 2 (which contain the suninstall program). Without the Webstart to kick in, your installation will be fully automated.

I can’t believe such oversight. What was Sun thinking? On another note, I’ve setup a Solaris 10 jumpstart server from the DVD but don’t remember this behaviour, so it was probably fixed on that version. I truly hope so, otherwise will have to waste time burning 5 CDs!