Monday, March 31, 2008

Minor Fix Update - Script To Unpack Solaris Datastream Pkg Files Without Sun's Pkg Utils

Hello again,

Updated 4/4/08 to output pkgproto results to a file named prototype. Originally had it writing to a file named pkgproto. Typo corrected :)

It's been a while since I started looking for a way to finish up our series of articles on RPM and pkg ripping and creating. We started out with creating our own RPM's and did pretty much everything I could think of to those poor packages, all the way through creating RPM's from already installed RPM's and converting RPM's to Solaris pkg's ;)

The only project I had left over (from that bunch) was how to extract the binary contents of Solaris Unix datastream pkg files.

Unfortunately, unlike the "rpm2cpio" command that Solaris includes, they have no regular program for converting a datastream package to an unpackable file (like a cpio or tar), unless you count all the basic pkg commands. What I was looking for was a way to extract a datastream pkg file, and get all the binary contents, without actually installing it. I got no love from Solaris, but I got some free time for myself and eventually figured it out ;)

I've included a script, below, to rip apart a Solaris datastream pkg and create a subdirectory (named the name of the pkg) into which I dump the pkginfo, pkgmap, pkgproto (which I derive from the pkgmap) and all the binary files that the pkg contains. The script, itself, is far from perfect, but if you check it out you can see, fairly easily, how you can manually pull apart a Solaris datastream pkg file and get to the binary contents that you really want (At least, I'm assuming you do - just like me ;)

Note that the version of cpio that comes with Solaris (in the SUNWcsu coreutils package) will complain about garbage bits in your cpio header, when you've clipped off the top of the pkg file. There are really only 2 garbage bits you have to delete (which you can do with vi), but I prefer to use the Gnu version of cpio which will "magically" ignore garbage bits and extract the cpio file no matter what. This version of cpio comes standard on Linux and can be downloaded (in Solaris datastream pkg format) from or (in source format, with links to all sorts of OS ports) Gnu's CPIO Download site - just in case you don't want to have to rip apart your Solaris pkg's on Linux (or don't have both OS's at your workplace).

Another strange thing is that Sun's version of cpio won't make directories, by default, that don't exist when you unpack a cpio archive (???) All I'm really saying is: Get the Gnu version - It's free and it'll save you many a gray hair ;)

I've tested today's script on multiple packages from and had great success with it working right the first time (assuming that I have Gnu's cpio). The script has broken on a few custom pkg's I've put together myself and can use a lot of work in the "additional" areas (like ensuring pre and post-install scripts get accounted for, depend files get tagged, checkinstall programs are properly extracted, etc). Still, it's a good beginning :)

Hopefully this will be of help to you, if you've been looking all over for something like this, and, almost definitely, can be the starting point for a fully functional Solaris datastream pkg ripper :)

If you want to do this manually, in short terms, just vi the pkg file you're interested in and delete everything up to the final instance of "pkginfo" in the file (after the final "pkgmap" line) and save the rest into another file, which you can manipulate with cpio. Who'd have thought it would end up being that simple? :)


Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License


# rip_pkg - rip apart Solaris pkg's and get the binaries out
# 2008 - Mike Golvach -

if ( $#ARGV != 0 ) {
print "Usage: $0 pkg_file\n";

$pkg_name = $ARGV[0];

# check and make sure it's a SVR4 DataStream Pkg

chomp($simple_header_check=`grep -i "package datastream" $pkg_name >/dev/null 2>&1;echo \$?`);

if ( $simple_header_check != 0 ) {
print "This doesn't appear to be a valid SVR4 DataStream pkg file. Exiting...\n";

# Memory Hogging Here - Until This Cold Quits Me And I Can Think My Way Out Of This ;)

open(PKG, "<$pkg_name");
@pkg_file = <PKG>;

# Split out header information and kludgey cpio file with binary contents

$header_end = 0;
$cpio_start = 0;
open (P_HEADERS, ">$pkg_name.headers");
foreach $line (@pkg_file) {
if ( $header_end == 0 && $line =~ /TRAILER/ && $line =~ /pkginfo/ ) {
print P_HEADERS $line;
$header_end = 1;
} elsif ( $header_end == 1 && $line =~ /pkginfo/ ) {
print P_HEADERS $line;
$cpio_start = 1;
open(P_CPIO, ">$pkg_name.cpio");
} elsif ( $cpio_start == 0 ) {
print P_HEADERS $line;
} elsif ( $cpio_start == 1 ) {
print P_CPIO $line;
} else {
print STDERR "WTF?\n";

open(P_HEADERS, "<$pkg_name.headers");
@p_headers = <P_HEADERS>;

$output_dir = 0;
$pkginfo_start = 0;
$pkginfo_seek = 0;
$pkgmap_start = 0;
foreach $p_head (@p_headers) {
if ( $output_dir eq 1 && $pkginfo_seek == 0 ) {
$output_dir = $p_head;
$output_dir =~ s/^(\w+)\W*.*$/$1/;
$pkginfo_seek = 1;
} elsif ( $output_dir eq 0 && $p_head =~ /datastream/i ) {
$output_dir = 1;
} elsif ( $output_dir eq 0 && $pkginfo_start == 0 ) {
} elsif ( $output_dir ne 0 && $p_head =~ /pkgmap/ ) {
$pkgmap_start = 1;
$pkginfo_start = 0;
} elsif ( $pkgmap_start == 1 && $p_head =~ /pkginfo/ ) {
push(@pkgmap, $p_head);
} elsif ( $output_dir ne 0 && $p_head =~ /pkginfo.*PKG=/ ) {
$pkginfo_start = 1;
} elsif ( $output_dir ne 0 && $pkgmap_start == 1 ) {
push(@pkgmap, $p_head);
} elsif ( $output_dir ne 0 && $pkginfo_start == 1 ) {
push(@pkginfo, $p_head);
} else {
print "WTF NOTHING MATCHED\n OD $output_dir PST $pkginfo_start PS $pkginfo_seek PMST $pkgmap_start\n$p_head\n";

open(PKGINFO_OUT, ">>pkginfo");
foreach $info (@pkginfo) {
print PKGINFO_OUT "$info\n";
open(PKGMAP_OUT, ">>pkgmap");
foreach $map (@pkgmap) {
print PKGMAP_OUT "$map\n";
open(PROTO_OUT, ">>prototype");
foreach $proto (@pkgmap) {
@proto = split(" ", $proto);
print PROTO_OUT "$proto[1] $proto[2] $proto[3] $proto[4] $proto[5] $proto[6]\n";
system("cpio -iv <../$pkg_name.cpio >/dev/null 2>&1");
system("tar cpf - *|(cd ../;tar xpf -)");
system("rm -r reloc");
unlink "$pkg_name.headers";
unlink "$pkg_name.cpio";

, Mike