[pca] Reboot recommended / required behaviour

[Martin Paul]

Hi Fred,

> My understanding it is that the logic between patchinfo and what PCA spits
> out works like this:
> 
> reconfigimmediate --> "Reconfig required"
> rebootimmediate --> "Reboot required"
> reconfiglater --> "Reconfig recommended"
> rebootlater --> "Reboot Recommended"

Correct.

> Correct me if I'm wrong, but when pca comes across a 'reconfig immediate'
> patch, for example *137137-09*, shouldn't it stop dead in it's path and
> prompt the user to reboot before proceeding with further patches? I think it
> just keeps on trucking until all the patches in it's list are done, doesn't
> it?

You're right, a patch with *immediate will not make pca stop installing 
patches, it will go on. There are three reasons for that behaviour:

After years of patching like this, I haven't seen a problem with it. Ok, 
that's a weak argument, I know :)

pca uses patchadd to install patches, and assumes its behaviour to be a 
kind of base standard. As you might guess, patchadd doesn't refuse to 
install further patches (for exceptions, see below), so pca follows this 
behaviour.

The third and strongest reason is this statement by Sun:
 
http://blogs.sun.com/patch/entry/definitive_interpretation_of_the_rebootimmediate

(or see InfoDoc 249046). It says:

reconfigimmediate: the system is in a potentially inconsistent state 
until the system is rebooted ... However, since the footprint of the 
patch utilities is relatively small, it is normally OK to continue to 
apply further patches before initiating the reboot.   In cases where 
this is not OK, the patch in question will typically contain additional 
code to prevent further patches from being applied until the reboot 
takes place (e.g. 118833-36/118855-36, whose patch scripts replace 
'patchadd' with a no-op telling the user to reboot the system).

All this convinced me that pca's behaviour is OK, especially as you 
probably would need more than one reboot during a regular patch session, 
slowing down things a lot.

For 100% safety, I guess Sun's (and my) answer would be to use Live 
Update to install patches in an inactive boot environment.

Martin.