So I had the bright idea of running Patch Manager on three of my test boxes. Sounded like it did everything but the kitchen sink.
I'm getting dependency errors. The documentation says it isn't supposed to have dependency errors.
I'm getting weird java crashes on one box. The documentation says it will update java first if needed.
I'm getting "patch already installed" errors. The documentation says it downloads only needed patches.
I'm getting patch PREREQUISITE errors. The documentation says it will find and install prerequisite patches in the right order.
Also, there are "this patch is not an installable type" errors and corrupt patch errors and "unable to verify jar file on the server" sorts of errors and a few "patch successfully backed out" messages for variety.
(and it went completely NUTS on the one server when it ran out of disk space....)
Does this thing work at all?? Has anyone had any success with this this?? Does it work in Solaris 9?
Clearly the documentation was written by marketing and not by anyone who actually *used* it.
At this point, in the interest of going home sometime this week, I've re-downloaded and un-jarred manually and am running everything by hand. Which, clearly, I should have done in the first place. Since one of the machines is an Ultra 5, ugh, going to be a very long night.
The biggest thing I'm worried about is that I may somehow have installed incomplete patches, or have a list of installed patches that is out of sync with reality. (secondary worry is what happens if I try to back out the patches? will an improperly installed patch back out neatly? )
I'm glad I tried this on the test boxes first. Tonight is the first time I've ever really, seriously, considered switching major production servers to Linux. All this time and Sun still can't get simple update scripts right!
Mutter
Betsy
(PS I also googled on deja before starting and found nothing but good things said about this tool...)
Betsy Schwartz email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Unix Systems Administrator,CRG voice: 617-495-5947
Harvard Graduate School of Design fax: 617-496-5866
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