[pca] New Sun policy on security/recommended patch versions

[Paul B. Henson]

I was thinking about the new policy on only patch versions actually
containing a new fix being marked security/recommened, rather than the most
recent version. My understanding is that current architectural limitations
within pca prevent it from dealing with the concept of "multiple" versions
of a patch, as opposed to just the most recent, and the initial workaround
implemented was to restore the previous functionality by rolling the
recommended/security flag up to the most recent version of a patch rather
than the version it's actually specified for.

It seems another option that would work within the current pca framework
yet allow this new minimal changes concept to be applied would be to go the
other way, and instead of rolling the flag up to the most recent version of
the patch, roll the "newest" version of the patch back to the one with the
flag.

For example, if there was a patch 12345-10 marked recommended, and a newer
version 12345-15 available, currently a 'pca -l missingrs' on a system
with 12345-10 installed would list 12345-15 as a "new" recommended patch.
By considering 12345-10 to be the most recent when loading the pca data
structures, 'pca -l missingrs' would no longer indicate 12345-15 was
necessary to have all recommended patches.

Thoughts? Pending some deeper reconstruction of pca to handle multiple
versions for a patch, it seems useful to have the option of maintaining
past behavior (currently available), as well as a way to avail of this new
information, both working within the current limitations.

Thanks...


-- 
Paul B. Henson  |  (909) 979-6361  |  http://www.csupomona.edu/~henson/
Operating Systems and Network Analyst  |  henson at csupomona.edu
California State Polytechnic University  |  Pomona CA 91768