[pca] Obsolete Patches

[deniz rende]

Thanks Martin for the answers.

I think I should be a little more clear on the subject. I've been working on
various live upgrade projects and each time when I do a lu from an older
update to the latest, sun provides list of patches that are needed to be
installed on the system before doing a lu. For example it would say you need
123332-12 or higher or 144332-1 or higher (I made up the patch numbers but
you get the idea).

So I end up creating a file that contains anywhere between 10-20 patches
which is not a problem. If I use pca to download and install the patches
from this file, then sometimes pca tells me 123332-12 is obsoleted by
123312-13.
In this case I am thinking either download the new patches by changing the
file or just download the patches in the file no matter what. I was curious
that instead of changing the file manually, can pca follow up on the
obsoleted patches in the file. If it warns me for the obsolete patch, then
could it download the newer one automatically?


On Thu, Sep 24, 2009 at 3:51 AM, Martin Paul <martin at par.univie.ac.at>wrote:

> deniz rende wrote:
>
>> Is there any way to tell pca to download the newer patches? or do I have
>> to
>> go back to my file and manually edit and change patch number x with patch
>> number y and download them again?
>>
>
> When you ask pca to list a certain patch (by specifying its ID), it will
> list that patch even if it's obsoleted. So, yes, if you want a
> self-maintained list of patches to install, you might have to check for
> patch obsoletions and replace the affected patch in the list if needed. This
> is not always a necessity, though. It's no problem to install obsoleted
> patches; if you put a certain patch (or even revisions of a patch) on your
> list, you might be interested in a certain fix. Often small patches are
> obsoleted by huge kernel patches and you probably don't want automatic
> obsoletion in such a case.
>
> Basically you have two options when patching:
>
> Install all patches. This is the paradigm that pca follows, that's why it
> lists all missing patches by default. You can restrict this to all
> "Security" patches, if needed.
>
> Install a certain, self-defined set of patches. pca will help you there,
> too, but it's on you to come up with the list of patches you want/need.
>
> The advantage of the first method is that OS+all patches is a setup which
> is tested by Sun, while it's impossible to test systems with all possible
> combinations of installed and missing patches. Patches often have
> side-effects which might cause problems then.
>
> Hope that helps,
>
> Martin.
>
>
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