Patching on Solaris

Finally, patching on Solaris is as easy as it should always have been =)

If you work with any solaris boxes these days, and if you've got Solaris 10 on them, you owe it to yourself to check out the Sun Update Connection.

It's a much more sensible method of getting patches onto your system than downloading clusters and hoping for the best, or going over everything by hand and making sure you're up to date.

It's as easy as this:

make a registration file, containing your free my sun login called, say, registrationprofile.properties:

userName=kai.howells

password=password

hostName=

subscriptionKey=

portalEnabled=false

proxyHostName=

proxyPort=

proxyUserName=

proxyPassword=

chown the file to root and chmod it 400

then:

[kai@helios ~]$ sudo sconadm register -a -r registrationprofile.properties

sconadm is running

Authenticating user ...

finish registration!

(this process took a few minutes, so be patient!)

Next, analyse your system, like so:

[kai@helios ~]$ sudo smpatch analyze

121430-11 SunOS 5.8 5.9 5.10: Live Upgrade Patch

121308-07 SunOS 5.10: Solaris Management Console Patch

119963-07 SunOS 5.10: Shared library patch for C++

118833-24 SunOS 5.10: kernel patch

<[snip]>

119903-02 OpenWindows 3.7.3: Xview Patch

119059-18 X11 6.6.2: Xsun patch

Once everything is analysed, patch the biaché:

[kai@helios ~]$ sudo smpatch update

121430-11 has been validated.

121308-07 has been validated.

122525-02 has been validated.

<[snip]>

etc...