[pca] view required PROM updates?

[Martin Paul]

John Lyman wrote:
> Is there a way to view required PROM updates along with missing patches?

Eric and Glenn are correct - the only bit of information that pca could 
use to correlate firmware patches with a certain machine is the textual 
description of the patch. This might look simple at first, but often 
there are multiple firmware patches for e.g. "V880". Or just look at these:

> 119232 -- < 02 --- 999 Hardware/PROM: Sun Blade 2500 (non Silver) Sun Fire
> V250 Flash PRO
> 119233 -- < 02 --- 999 Hardware/PROM: Sun Blade 2500 (Silver) Flash PROM
> Update

The "uname" command doesn't have information about the color of the 
machine. Then there's much more firmware in a system than you might 
imagine (disks, dvd drive, back plane, service processor, etc.), all of 
which require different patches.

It's not that it's technically impossible to find a solution for this 
problem. Sun could have given a unique ID to any device with patchable 
firmware, provide a command which lists all the IDs and firmware 
versions in a system, and list the IDs/versions in patchdiag.xref with 
each patch. Now you have all ingredients to make a tool like pca work 
for firmware patches as well.

In a closed environment of Sun hard- and software that would have been 
doable, but as soon as you add third-party hardware, everything gets 
very complicated ..

Martin.