Problem: some of the larger SunFreeware packages won’t install because they run out of space.

This particularly affects GCC. SunFreeware packages are supplied in datastream (single file) format. When pkgadd installs one, it first tries to translate it to file system format using the spool area in /var. I installed on a host with 195Mb free space in /var and I still ran out of space (because the GCC 3.2.2 pkg is 280Mb uncompressed).

To workaround this, simply do the package translation yourself prior to installing. Choose a filesystem with lots of space, move the downloaded package there and run:
$ gzip -d gcc-3.2.2-sol8-sparc-local.gz $ pkgtrans gcc-3.2.2-sol8-sparc-local . all (become root) # pkgadd -d .

For future use, you may wish to tar and compress the directory created from this procedure, then delete the original datastream pkg.