[pca] Functionality with Patching?

[Martin Paul]

Don O'Malley wrote:
> I would suggest you investigate the Patch Bundles on SunSolve to upgrade to 
> Solaris 10 05/08 (u5) or Solaris 10 10/08 (u6).

This sounds as if you could actually go from an older release (uX) to a 
newer release (uX+1) by installing the patch bundle, but that's not true.

While the patch bundle contains all the patches included in the newer 
update, it does *not* contain any new packages which were added in a an 
update release.

The result is the same for fixes and new features which were delivered 
in patches (like ZFS boot and Zone Update on Attach), but you will be 
missing new features and applications which came in with new packages. 
An example would be the VNC client, which was added to 5/08 via the 
SUNWvncviewer package.

So if you're interested in a subset of new functionality only, and this 
subset has been introduced via patches, installing the patches is 
sufficient. If you want *exactly* the same functionality, you have to do 
an upgrade install to the new update release.

See also "How does the Patch Bundle differ from the Solaris 10 05/08 
(Update 5) release image ?" on:

   http://blogs.sun.com/patch/entry/solaris_10_5_08_update

Hope this helps,

Martin.