[pca] OT: timing of Sun patch releases?

[Don O'Malley]

Hi,

Sorry for the delay coming back to you on this.

I think most of the major points have been covered already.
In short, no, Sun do not have any release schedule for patches. Patches 
are released as they complete testing and are deemed to be release-ready.
 From this perspective, we do not introduce any unnecessary waiting 
periods for patches that have completed testing & verification, like 
Microsoft may do with their "Patch Tuesday".

The Big Admin article Jan pointed out at 
http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hubs/documentation/patch/patch-docs/abugslife.pdf 
gives a good insight into the patch creation process.
The big rule to take from this article is that all changes get put back 
to the development release (Solaris Next) first and must soak there for 
4 weeks prior to being allowed back into a "Patch Gate" for Solaris 8, 9 
& 10.
 From there to release there are a number of internal processes that 
come into play to determine how long it will take for a patch to get 
created, tested and released. (The main issue here is that the "Patch 
Gate" for a particular Solaris Release will not always be open to put 
code back into and subsequently create a patch from.)

As Marin points out, when a Solaris Update is Release Ready, there will 
be typically in the region of 80-100 patches that will be released 
pretty much at the same time (each obsoleting a previous "sustaining" 
patch).
Sun do recommend that, where possible, customers upgrade to the latest 
Solaris release and then apply patches thereafter in line with their 
specific patching strategy. By upgrading you would have these 80-100 
patches already pre-applied or "freshbitted" in the Solaris Update, and 
so avoid the need to manually apply them.
I realize that in practice this may not always be practical, with 
upgrade sometimes requiring customers to recertify their applications.

Let me know if you've any other questions on this and I'll try and 
provide more information if I can...

Best,
-Don


Martin Paul wrote:
> Jeff A. Earickson wrote:
>> I've noticed that patches seem to come in unpredictable waves;
>> generally a new wave hits the day after I've done rebootable
>> patches during scheduled downtime. 
>
> There's one kind of event which always creates a huge wave of new 
> patches - right after a new Solaris has been published, many patches 
> are obsoleted by new patches, and the new kernel patches also replaces 
> a lot of other patches. This is happening right now, after the release 
> of Solaris 10 10/09.
>
> This is due to the "SplitGate" model used for Solaris 10 update 
> releases. Gerry Haskins writes about that, e.g. in:
>
>   http://blogs.sun.com/patch/entry/solaris_10_kernel_patchid_progression
>
> hth,
>
> Martin.
>