[pca] PCA not reporting on patches that may need to be re-installed

[Rajiv Gunja]

Norman,

Maybe I did not explain myself clearly. I do agree with your argument and I
do understand what you were stating about certain packages which when
installed after patching can leave the system without being fully patched.

My main argument was that, if a new version of a package is released, it
"usually" is a superset of the old package and its related subsequent
patches.

There are packages which will not be updated via patching, which might be
due to design change.

What I go by are the prerequisites that are mentioned within the latest
package and if there are any patches that was released after this package
was released.
To date I have not seen a package fail due to a missing patch. And I do not
think any of the SUN's patching tools (EIS, SM, TLP) will do what you are
asking for.

I think there are couple SUN guys on this distribution and Martin himself is
a patching|OS Guru, so I will leave it up to them to correct|comment on our
views.

Thanks

-GGR

--
Rajiv G Gunja
Blog: http://ossrocks.blogspot.com


2009/3/21 Norman Lyon <norman.lyon at gmail.com>

> But my point is that the version number stays consistent across all
> the patches.  If you take an FCS build of S10 installed with
> SUNWCXall, you'll find that the version for SUNWsshr is
> "11.10.0,REV=2005.01.21.15.53."  Patch it to the latest rev, and the
> version is still "11.10.0,REV=2005.01.21.15.53."  By your logic, it'll
> never need to be patched, regardless of any fixes or changes in the
> packages.
>
> On the flip side, take your FCS box, but it's built with SUNWCrnet
> (and never been patched).  Tomorrow, you get a requirement to add SSH
> to the system, so you grab the SSH packages from the media you have on
> hand, which is S10U6.  When you do that, you now have 119079-13,
> 120011-14, 123259-12, 125095-15, 128318-01, 137137-09, 138217-01,
> 138287-07.  You then notice it's never been patched, so decide it's
> time to patch to current levels.  But since these 8 patches are on the
> system (even though they're only patching SSH packages), they won't be
> picked out by PCA (or most tools out there) as needing to be
> installed, since they show up when doing a 'showrev -(a|p) | grep
> ${PATCH}'.
>
> Now, let's look at just one of these patches, 137137-09.  Isn't that
> the latest kernel patch?  You didn't update SUNWarc, SUNWarcr,
> SUNWcakr, SUNWcar, SUNWcart200, SUNWckr, SUNWcpcu, SUNWcpr, SUNWcry,
> SUNWcsd, SUNWcsl, SUNWcslr, SUNWcsr, SUNWcsu, SUNWdmgtu, SUNWdtrc,
> SUNWefc, SUNWefcl, SUNWesu, SUNWfmd, SUNWfruip, SUNWhea, SUNWib,
> SUNWiopc, SUNWipfh, SUNWipfu, SUNWiscsitgtr, SUNWiscsitgtu, SUNWkvm,
> SUNWkvmt200, SUNWldomr, SUNWldomu, SUNWluxd, SUNWmdb, SUNWmdbr,
> SUNWmdr, SUNWmdu, SUNWnfsckr, SUNWnfscu, SUNWnfsskr, SUNWnfssr,
> SUNWnfssu, SUNWnisu, SUNWniumx, SUNWnxge, SUNWopenssl-libraries,
> SUNWpcu, SUNWpd, SUNWpdu, SUNWpiclu, SUNWpmr, SUNWpmu, SUNWpppd,
> SUNWrds, SUNWrsg, SUNWrsgk, SUNWs8brandr, SUNWs8brandu, SUNWs9brandr,
> SUNWs9brandu, SUNWsmapi, SUNWssad, SUNWtavor, SUNWtoo, SUNWudapltu,
> SUNWus, SUNWusb, SUNWust1, SUNWust2, SUNWwbsup, SUNWxcu4, SUNWypu,
> SUNWzfskr, SUNWzfsr, SUNWzfsu, or SUNWzoneu, all of which are packages
> that 137137-09 would have patched (if you waited to install SSH after
> the patching).
>
> As for comparing release dates of OS versus patches, you can't look at
> that.  Testing and release cycles for the OS and patches are
> different.  The OS, released in November was assembled Oct 27, but
> it's patch levels are chosen earlier to meet a specific freeze and
> testing cycle.  Newer patches get applied as required, but not solely
> due to the fact that they exist.  On the flip side, some patches get
> put into the OS that never officially get released to the service
> contract paying public.
>
>
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