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pifself - Generate a Self-Installing PIF Product

The pifself command generates a self-installing PIF product using the PIF product file created by the pifmk command. The PIF product can be installed without using any installation program on the target computer. A standard shell invokes the installation procedure. Sufficient free disk space is required for the product generation; minimum size is the size of the product to be packaged.

The -a option lets you create a self-installing PIF product, even if the product was created for “Any” platform.

The -j option lets you integrate a Java Runtime Environment (JRE) in a self-installing PIF product. This JRE will then be used by the Installer on the target system to run the installation dialogs.

When you use the -s option, you can split the self-installing PIF product into three separate units, the start script, the actual PIF product, and a self-installing shell script including the Installer. To have these separated units is of value if you are working in a software delivery environment and do not need the self-installing function. In this case, you can register only the separated actual PIF product in the Software Package Library. Whenever you want to use the self-installing function, you must ensure that the three units mentioned previously are located in the same folder, and run the self-installing shell script.

This command has the following format:

pifself ­f PIFfile ­d selfinstallingfile 
	[­a platform] [­j {JREpath|"default"}] [­s] [­o]
-f PIFfile

Specifies the name of the PIF product file.

-d selfinstallingfile

Specifies the file name of the self-installing PIF product.

-a platform

Specifies the name of the operating system platform of the target computer where the PIF product shall be installed.

-j {JREpath | "default"}

Imports the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) from the specified path or uses the default JRE. The default JRE is a stripped and downsized JRE version for Linux platforms. The value of JREpath should be a valid JRE directory like /usr/lib/jvm/jre-1.5sun.

-s

Specifies separate. The PIF product file specified through the -f option is separated from the self-installing file.

-o

Specifies overwrite. If an item with the same name already exists in the destination directory, it is overwritten.

Exit status:

Displays the status of the command execution. The value zero (0) means OK, any non-zero value indicates Error.

Example: Create a self-installing PIF product

The following command creates a self-installing PIF product using the file test-pif.AIX.@pif. The self-installing PIF product is stored as test-pif.AIX.sh.

pifself -f test-pif.AIX.@pif -d test-pif.AIX.sh