Solaris

I downloaded solaris's patchmanager program, analyzed my system and it spewed out a list of probably around 75 patches that needed to be installed. First off is it nessacary to install all of these? Should I install all of these in single user mode. Is the "smpatch update" command the best to use for this?

Thanks
Steve

A) Usually updated packages are a good thing. They fix security exploits, add features, and fix bugs. Of course, when you patch a program that directly affects a production environement such as MySQL, Apache, etc etc... you have to make sure that your system will continue to opearate properly.

B) AFAIK, it is not necessary to switch to single user mode to install the patches. But I have not worked w/ a Solaris server recently.

C) My feelings on whether its the best way are: "If it works the way you expected it to and solved the problem, then its the best way". Keep in mind, its definetely not the only way.

My 2 cents

I seems as thought Sun releases a group of patches in one executable "cluster". I wonder why they just dont have cumulative patches.

well i am new to solaris but i love solaris coming to the question of uploading the patch , as far as my knowledge goes we can install the patches from init level 3 also.

sun microsystems recommends that you should install the solaris recommended & security patches in single user mode... if something goes wrong while patching, the first thing i would ask you..... have you installed it in single user mode???? if not, the garantie is not warrantable.... if you are sure the patch is not a system patch you could install it in level 3.... get more information on
http://sunsolve.sun.com/pub-cgi/show...rget=patchpage

greetings Preßy

Well there you go, thanks for the info about the single user mode stuff. I have never run in to any problems with running in runlevel 3, but its a bad habit that I should probally stop doing

Hi,

have a weird situation here:

I have a server which I recently patch. before the patch, the 3rd party application was running smoothly. after the patch, upon re-booting of the server, the 3rd party application starts going hay-wire. It just starts up, then in a short while of 5-10s, it goes down again. And it keeps repeating this cycle!

This goes on till about midnight that day. Then the application resumes working by itself with no problem at all. Log files of the application was sent to the vendor but the vendor said that was nothing wrong with the application, and so right now, the vendor was suspecting whether certain patches has a underlaying period of inactivity before activation.

Just wondering if any one out there has experience such issues before, please share your 2 cents worth. Thanks.