[pca] specifying a specific date instead of minage

[Russell Millard Oliver]

My solution to this very issue is to create a baseline text file on the
date in question.  I have dev systems that will get patches on a
Tuesday, then prod gets them during our systems time on Sunday morning.
I output a list of the patches on the dev systems, then use that same
list on the prod systems.  The list is fed into pca and then only what
is on the list gets installed.   

I've created a script that uses pca to create my lists, download the
patches, and prepare for the actual installs.  This has worked out great
in our environment because then no matter how long I wait, I still get
the same patches in prod as I get in dev.

Russ Oliver
University of Wyoming

-----Original Message-----
From: amy.rich at tufts.edu [mailto:amy.rich at tufts.edu] 
Sent: Wednesday, August 27, 2008 1:46 PM
To: pca at lists.univie.ac.at
Subject: [pca] specifying a specific date instead of minage

We have different classes of machines, dev, test, staging, and
production,
upon which we install patches in a progressive cycle.  We use the same
pca.conf file for all systems.  I'd like to be able to freeze the date,
not
minage, of patches that we install so that all levels get the same
patches
regardless of the day on which they were installed.

Telling the machine not to update the patchdiag.xref file with
--nocheckxref
seems suboptimal.  There's no easy way to ensure that they're all
looking at
the one from the same date while still keeping the copy on the proxy
server
current (in case we quickly need to apply a security patch, for
example).

Is there already a way to do this that I've missed?