What is the latest news on using updatemanager on a system that
has multiple zones? The patches for the Sun Studio product need
to be installed using the -G option to patchadd, but updatemanager
can't figure that out.
We've got a frustrated user over in this thread:
http://forum.sun.com/jive/thread.jspa?forumID=309&threadID=105599
There are several bugs already open for the problems the SunUC toolset have with the Studio11 patches and for the fact that the Studio 11 patches are not "zone aware".
This is being looked at progressed appropriately. In the meantime the workaround is to manually install the Studio 11 patches using patchadd and the -G option. Note that the issue here is that the Studio 11 patches are not zone aware and not that the SunUC toolset is not zone aware.
As a comment to the other thread, generally the signed patches are used by the patching tools and the unsigned patches used when downloading the patch to be applied manually. If however the customer wishes to use the signed pathces then Document ID : 86386 on sunsolve may be useful to use in conjunction with the previously mentiond faw on signed/unsigned patches.
Thanks Moderator. I'm guessing that's a typo, and faw should actually be faq, in reference to the pointer provided in the original thread. I've looked at the document you mentioned, and it does indeed look useful.
I think I'm the "frustrated user" Chris was talking about. My main frustration is not for myself, it's for all of the people that have less Solaris experience than I do that are going to encounter this issue.
Based on your response, I think I understand the problem better. Is it fair (and correct) to summarize that updatemanager (and smpatch) requires any patches that it is going to apply on Solaris 10 be zone-aware?
If that is a correct statement, then I'm afraid I have to disagree with you -- to me the real issue is that updatemanager shows me patches, and allows me to attempt to install said patches, without there being any chance of the patches successfully installing. If updatemanager can determine at "Check for Updates" time that a particular patch is not zone-aware (and I'm not sure if that's possible, so maybe this is academic), then updatemanager shouldn't allow me to select it (it either should be "grayed out" or alternately it shouldn't be shown at all).
Thanks for your time and the pointers you provided in the the reply,
Tim
Yes, apologies for the typo.
Whilst I agree that the toolset should handle these problems better the problem in this specific example is with the patches. With that having been said there are bugs open not only to fix the Studio 11 patches but also to ensure that the toolset deals with any problems such as this more effectively in future. So do not worry, this is being looked at from both sides.
The last word from the Forum Moderator in this thread was:
> So do not worry, this is being looked at from both sides.
I am interested in knowing if the problem has yet been resolved.
On August 28th (if it matters), I installed the latest version of Solaris 10 on my Sparc machine. A week or so ago, I installed Sun Studio 11 and, yesterday (after running into problems in making a connection with Sun's server), I ran into the same problem with Sun Update Manager updates for Sun Studio 11 that Enchanter has described both here and elsewhere.
Enchanter is right, I think, about new users. I'm trying to make the switch to Solaris (successfully, I think) but can easily imagine droves of novices abandoning Solaris because there are so many impediments to making a smooth transition.
Anyway, I do look forward to an update.
Well, since that last post I抳e re-examined the situation.
Here抯 what Sun Update Manager continued to tell me about available updates:
120761-02 Performance Analyzer
121019-03 Fortran 95
121015-03 C 5.8 compiler
121023-03 dbx
121017-06 C++
121021-05 Fortran 95 Libraries
120760-11 Compilers Back-End
Same as yesterday. When I ran Sun Update Manager again, I got the same old updates and four new ones. The new ones installed, but the original seven failed!
So I went to the Sun Studio 11 Patches page at: http://developers.sun.com/sunstudio/downloads/patches/ss11_patches.html
where I logged in and accessed the document for 120761-02 (or so I think - see below) intending to give it one more try by downloading the unsigned version. No joy. I got kicked over to the Sunsolve Login Page - even though I抦 already logged in!
Hey! I'm persistent, so I returned to the Sun Studio Patches page and accessed the document for 121019-03, clicked on the download link and ?it downloaded! Same with the remaining five files. I ended up installing them all manually.
And, then, I figured it out. Remember, though, that Sun Update Manager is telling me that I want 120761-02. And all the link on the Sun Studio 11 patches page shows me is 120761 ?without an extension.
What I didn抰 realize was that I was getting served the document for 120761-03! No matter, when I clicked on the link in that page to the obsoleted copy of the document for 120761-02 I got kicked over again to the Sunsolve Login Page. No joy either way. When I did it one more time, I was told 揝orry, the patch you requested could not be found.?br>
Want to know what happened when I accessed the document for 120761-03 on a Windows XP machine and clicked the link for the unsigned patch download? It took me to the Software Licence Agreement! When I accepted, though, I went right back to the Sunsolve Home Page. But when I did the same thing for 120761-02, the download dialog came up!
That was promising and I will admit to being strongly tempted to download on the Windows machine to see what would happen, but decided to give my SPARC machine one more try downloading 120761-02 and ?it worked!
At the moment, everything is installed and I抦 right up to date. But what a struggle! Does it need to be like this?
Thank you for the reassurance.
Perhaps I'm being dim, but I can't see how to, for example,
get -G (GZ only) functionality in updatemanager.
Asking google for
updatemanager zones site:docs.sun.com
gets 19 hits of man page indexes.
Searching outside docs.sun.com gives
Sun Connection Update Manager Client 1.0.9 Release Notes February 2007 at
http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/features/hub_articles/sc_update_rn.jsp
which says that updatemanager can
- only be used in the global zone
- can only apply default flags (ie, no -G)
Could you sketch out how to use updatemanager to only install
a patch in the GZ (if the patch params are appropriate, of course),
or point me to some docs?
Thanks again.
PS. Perhaps we have different conceptions of 'zone-aware'?
