Martin, Thanks for adding this feature, I just tried it (after fiddling with my firewall, this feature requires http/https access to "support.oracle.com" and "login.oracle.com"). The information I got meshes with my idea of the support that I am paying for.
While I have seen a lot of grumbling about the Sunsolve->Oracle changeover on this list, I have to say that it went flawlessly for me. I got my daily reports of patches that I could apply (a cron job of just "pca" output), and I could successfully apply patches when I wanted to. Maybe my success was because I was in the US and not in Europe... Jeff Earickson Colby College On Mon, Dec 20, 2010 at 5:52 AM, Martin Paul <[email protected]> wrote: > Recently Mike Brown provided a document ID (1269292.1, available on My > Oracle Support) which explains the correlation between Support Contracts, > Support Levels and Patches. > > In short, a certain Support Level is required to access any patch. A certain > type of Support Contract includes one or more Support Levels. Only if these > match, one is allowed to download a patch. This explains some effects seen > recently, e.g. Sun Studio Patches (require Support Level "Software") not > being available for customers with a "Premier Support for Operating Systems" > (Support Level "Operating System", formerly known as "Basic Solaris > Subscription" or similar). > > In the current development release of PCA (20101220-01) I added two things: > > (1) A new command line option "--supplevel", which contacts My Oracle > Support and shows the Support Levels of a given MOS Account. Example: > > $ pca --user [email protected] --passwd secret --supplevel > Determining MOS Support Levels > > OS: Solaris patches and updates > PUB: Oracle Open Office/StarOffice and patch utilities > $ > > (2) A new section called SUPPORT LEVELS in PCA's documentation which > explains the concept and which includes a table of possible Support Levels > and Support Contract Coverage. See "pca --man" or: > > http://www.par.univie.ac.at/solaris/pca/usaged.html#support_levels > > Much of the information has been taken from the above mentioned Knowledge > Article. > > PCA will still not be able to tell you which patches are accessible when > using a certain MOS Account without actually trying to download it. For that > to work, Oracle would have to include a new column in patchdiag.xref, > specifying the required Support Level to download a patch. > > Martin. > >
