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.
