[pca] Generate List

[Martin Paul]

Gehring, Andrew wrote:
> I have two systems, that are identical in both hardware and software
> (Solaris 10 8/07 s10s_u4wos_12b SPARC).

Ok, that's a good start. As Don mentioned, it can get complicated with 
pre-installed patches if you try to do that with different update releases.

> Patches were applied, at sometime in the recent pass (Feb 10th if
> /var/sadm/patch is to be trusted, but I don’t ☺ ).

Usually you can trust that output enough, but "showrev -p" or "patchadd 
-p" will definitely have the correct list. By chance, this is the 
command which pca uses internally, so a start would be to run "pca -l 
installed" on both systems and compare the list with "diff".

It doesn't matter whether patches were installed with patchadd, smpatch 
or pca, BTW, they will always show up in this list.

Now it really depends on how often the machine(s) were patched and how 
different the patch state is. As patches can be obsoleted by other 
patches, it might not be as simple as installing a handful of patches on 
one system to get to the same state. It's possible that some patches 
were installed on the test machine only, and some others on the 
production machine only.

> So, I’m trying to figure a good way of patching the production system
> to the same level as the test/development system…

Do you need exactly the state from the test system as it is now, or can 
you install additional patches there before trying to get them in sync? 
In the second case, I suggest to install the current set of missing 
patches with pca on the test system, keep the patchdiag.xref file, and 
later do the same on the production system.

 From then on, always install patches with pca using the same xref file 
(not necessarily at the same date!), and you're guaranteed to have the 
same state.

Hope that helps,

Martin.