Something that comes to mind as a good use for this if it were integrated into pca is a way to get around the problems associated with specifying a version of a patch that isn't in the current patchdiag.xref.
As an example, say I want to install a back revision of the kernel patch, 144488-11. Currently if I were to do "pca -i 144488-11", it wouldn't do any dependency checking and just try to install 144488-11. A new procedure would have pca download a copy of 144488-11, grab the dependency info from within the zip, replace the info in a temporary patchdiag.xref, and then do the normal dependency checks. This would take longer since it would have to pre-download patches before doing a final dependency check and possibly downloading some additional patches, but I don't see why it wouldn't work. On Fri, Jun 17, 2011 at 6:21 AM, Martin Paul <[email protected]>wrote: > Jeff, > > Thanks a lot for giving the script a try and reporting the results. I'm > surprised that it worked so fine on the first attempt. Using it with the > Update cluster is an interesting application, too - good idea! > > I have now put the mkxref script on the "Contrib" section of the PCA > webpage. If others use it and find any bugs, please let me know. If this > proves to be useful and I get more feedback from other admins, I might later > integrate the functionality into PCA itself. > > Martin. > > > Jeff wrote: > >> OK, I tested this and it works great. Using the patchdiag created from >> the >> CPU, I was able to download, install and reboot the server in the amount >> of >> time it would take me to copy the 2GB tarball and start extracting it, and >> instead of having to try installing each of the 200+ patches like the >> installcluster script, I installed only what I needed. A huge time >> savings, >> and the end results were the same patches got installed whether I used pca >> with the custom patchdiag or the installcluster script. >> >> I also tried the same thing using the Update 9 patch cluster. The patch >> cluster contains 648 patches, that was knocked down to 120 patches, so you >> can definitely see a huge timesavings there. Only thing I had to do was >> install patch 144401-09 manually, which is only available in the Update 9 >> cluster, not downloadable from MOS. That patch modifies the /etc/release >> file to reflect that you are running at the patch equivalent of Update 9. >> >> Awesome job Martin, great solution to the problem. >> >> On Thu, Jun 16, 2011 at 9:41 AM, Jeff <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> Just to add another thought. Another great use for this would be with >>> the >>> bundles that are created to patch to a update level rather then doing a >>> LiveUpgrade. >>> >>> I'll try it against the Update 9 patch bundle and see what happens. >>> >>> >>> On Thu, Jun 16, 2011 at 9:37 AM, Jeff <[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>> This is awesome Martin, my guess is it might make a patchdiag file more >>>> accurate then the real one since it would use the info that patchadd >>>> would >>>> use to decide if it needs to be installed. >>>> >>>> I'll give it a test and see if the results match if I installed the CPU >>>> from the bundled install scripts, but I think this is a great solution. >>>> >>>> >>>> On Thu, Jun 16, 2011 at 8:26 AM, Martin Paul <[email protected] >>>> >wrote: >>>> >>>> After the idea came up to create a special patchdiag.xref which only >>>>> includes the patches of a Critical Patch Cluster (CPU), I couldn't >>>>> resist >>>>> and gave it a try. >>>>> >>>>> I downloaded the "CPU OS Cluster 2011/04 Solaris 10 SPARC" and hacked >>>>> up >>>>> a script (mkxref, see attachment) which extracts the necessary >>>>> information >>>>> from the patch READMEs, patchinfo and pkginfo files and creates a >>>>> patchdiag.xref file. The idea is that this can then be used with PCA to >>>>> patch systems to the state of the CPU without actually having to >>>>> download >>>>> the +2GB file (on every system). >>>>> >>>>> Take care: The script is mostly untested. It's hard to verify whether >>>>> the >>>>> patchdiag.xref it creates is 100% correct. It works with PCA, and I've >>>>> compared a few sample patches with their entries in the real xref file, >>>>> and >>>>> they looked fine. The Recommended/Security flags are missing (they are >>>>> not >>>>> in the patchinfo file), but this shouldn't matter. >>>>> >>>>> I'm including both the script and the patchdiag.xref file I created >>>>> from >>>>> the above mentioned CPU. If anybody does some experiments with it, I'd >>>>> be >>>>> happy to hear about it. Theoretically, one can generate xref files for >>>>> any >>>>> set of patches with the script, which might be of use in other regards >>>>> than >>>>> with the CPU as well. >>>>> >>>>> Martin. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>> -- >>>> Jeff >>>> >>>> >>> >>> -- >>> Jeff >>> >>> > -- Jeff
