[pca] Pca Applying unnecessary patch

[Martin Paul]

Hi,

> It applied patch 114176-05 
> 114176 -- < 05 --- 999 Sun Cluster 3.0: OPS Core Patch for Solaris 9 
> 
> There is no mention of this patch in showrev -p and uname -a is -- >
> SunOS joebloggs 5.8 Generic_117350-38 sun4u sparc SUNW,Sun-Fire-880

Thanks for the report. It's incorrect behaviour - the patch shouldn't be 
listed by pca on a Solaris 8 machine.

> How did pca decide this patch was needed 

pca takes the list of packages (including package versions) and compares 
it to the packages patched by a patch (information taken from 
patchdiag.xref). If there is a match, the patch can be be applied. This 
works because usually packages have different version numbers on 
different releases of Solaris (or unbundled software).

If you take a look at 111857 and 114176 in the patchdiag.xref file, 
you'll see that they patch exacly the same packages:

   SUNWscucm:3.0.0,REV=2000.10.01.01.00
   SUNWudlm:3.0.0,REV=2000.10.01.01.00
   SUNWudlmr:3.0.0,REV=2000.10.01.01.00

That's why patchadd didn't refuse to install the patch either. It's one 
of those rare cases where Sun failed to either use different version 
numbers (if the software/patch is different on Solaris 8 and 9) or 
produced two patches with the same fixes. pca won't rely on the Synopsis 
line (".. for Solaris 8"), and there's no other way to decide automatically.

Whenever such patches are reported to me, I add a workaround into pca 
itself. I've done that for 111857/114176 now as well in the current pca 
development release. The problem shouldn't show up again.

Martin.