I am trying to find out how Sun patches patch manifests. When a manifest is listed in the patch, is the new manifest imported, with the changes taking effect immediately, or do they have some kind of delayed installation?
In this particular case, the patch is adding a dependency to a service. I am trying to decide whether or not to add the "reboot required" attribute to the patch. I don't think it should be added, but there are some corner cases I am worried about. We specify "reboot required" when a patch does not make the system unstable, but the patch will not take affect until the reboot happens. Obviously, we make these distinctions to help customers decide whether they reboot sooner or later or not at all. So, if your application has failures because of a bug in a kernel driver, and the patch installs a new driver, we want you to be aware that you don't have to reboot right away, but you also don't get the fix until you do. So, the thing is, adding a dependency changes the order a service is started in on a reboot. So, if we have added a dependency and then do not reboot, can the system be said to have the fix or not? There is no point in rebooting if the end result is a system in exactly the same state as it is now. That presumes that the service is already up and running. If the service is not already up and running, will the new dependency be in affect when the service is enabled, after the patch is installed. If so, I don't think there is any question, since at that point the fix is totally working. If not, then that might be an issue, although the new dependency is on the naming service, so the only systems on which it would not be enabled is a system that is up and running with the naming service turned off. That doesn't sound too typical. -- blu "The advertising giveth and the EULA taketh away." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Brian Utterback - Solaris RPE, Sun Microsystems, Inc. Ph:877-259-7345, Em:brian.utterback-at-ess-you-enn-dot-kom
