[pca] Question regarding PCA flag "-X"
Martin Paul
martin at par.univie.ac.at
Tue Feb 24 09:54:35 CET 2009
Hi,
> I am really getting addicted to this sweet program.
It's always great to hear that :)
> 1. It looks like even if I use the "-X" option to specify a location
> where we have the patchdiag.xref file, the program attempts to
> download the Sun's xref file.
Glenn already pointed you at the -y/--nocheckxref option. There are two
separate options, as sometimes you might want to store the xref file in
a certain directory, but still keep it up-to-date automatically.
When using multiple baseline xref files as you do, it's best to keep
them in different directories, like:
/path/to/xref/010609/patchdiag.xref
/path/to/xref/011509/patchdiag.xref
...
Then you can use e.g.:
pca -X /path/to/xref/010609 -y ...
to select a certain xref file file without having to rename it.
> 2. For some reason, even though I am patching a Solaris 9
> server, yet three patches one each for Solaris 7, 8 & 10 are reported
> as ones needing to be installed. Any idea why?
Again, Glenn already pointed into the right direction. Sometimes,
especially for "unbundled" patches (for Solaris applications not
belonging to the core OS), the same package versions are used on all
Solaris releases, but there are different patches produced, one per
Solaris release. When pca isn't 100% sure that a patch does *not* apply
to a system, it always shows the patch. As a case like you describe it
is not uncommon, though, I've added special hints for certain patches to
pca to identify the correct patch for each Solaris release.
Actually, a workaround for the patches you list is already in the
current development release of pca. Either get that, or wait one or two
days, as I'm about to put out the next official release.
If you ever hit such a problem again: A short term fix is to use pca's
"ignore" option in e.g. /etc/pca.conf. You should report the problem to
the mailing list as well, though, so I can fix it in pca (and therefore
for all users).
Hope that helps,
Martin.
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