Hello,

I have recently been assigned to manage some Solaris systems that are
already in production.  One of the tasks is to manage patch management
on this systems.

On Windows and Linux (personal systems), I check for updates frequently
(almost daily) and apply the latest released patches.  On enterprise
systems, they are many components on the Solaris or any OS for that
matter.  How do you know which patches to apply?  Can this process be
automated on Solaris, like in Windows "update" feature or Debian Linux
"apt_update" tool?

What are the best practices for patch management for Solaris?

Thank you in advance for any information, pointers or advice.

Regards,
-- 
SR
castellan2004-mail@SPAMBUSTER.yahoo.com
Please remove SPAMBUSTER to reply via email.

In article <Z_ednZXhMPvvqAzfRVn-rA@adelphia.com>, Subba Rao <castellan2004-mail@SPAMBUSTER.yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> I have recently been assigned to manage some Solaris systems that are
> already in production.  One of the tasks is to manage patch management
> on this systems.
>
> On Windows and Linux (personal systems), I check for updates frequently
> (almost daily) and apply the latest released patches.  On enterprise
> systems, they are many components on the Solaris or any OS for that
> matter.  How do you know which patches to apply?  Can this process be
> automated on Solaris, like in Windows "update" feature or Debian Linux
> "apt_update" tool?

Yes. With Solaris 10:

# smpatch update

(I think this exists in Solaris 9, too. I haven't played much with 9.)

-Dan

On Sun, 22 May 2005 21:53:17 -0500, Subba Rao wrote:

> On Windows and Linux (personal systems), I check for updates frequently
> (almost daily) and apply the latest released patches.  On enterprise
> systems, they are many components on the Solaris or any OS for that
> matter.  How do you know which patches to apply?  Can this process be
> automated on Solaris, like in Windows "update" feature or Debian Linux
> "apt_update" tool?

You don't use Windows Update for your Windows servers, do you?

> What are the best practices for patch management for Solaris?

Google '"patch management" site:sun.com"'

Subba Rao wrote:
> What are the best practices for patch management for Solaris?
>

First thing to do is to create a sunsolve.sun.com account and link your
contracts to it (If you are under contract).

If you are on Solaris 8 or 9 download Sun Patch Manager 2.0
(http://www.sun.com/download/products.xml?id=40c8c2ad). Solaris 10
already comes with this. All of the documentation for setup is in the
PDF's that come with the larger zip.

If you are a Sun spectrum customer you can download and install your
own local patch server, which is useful if you have a lot of servers to
manage and you don't want them to all go out to the main Sun patch
server on the net. Otherwise setup smpatch and use that.

I would also recommend you look into the live upgrade feature in
solaris (see docs.sun.com)

Subba Rao <castellan2004-mail@spambuster.yahoo.com> wrote:
> What are the best practices for patch management for Solaris?

As for best practices and developing a patch policy, read:

  http://www.sun.com/blueprints/0205/819-1002.pdf

Regarding tools - others have mentioned Sun Patch Manager (smpatch).
If you have a lot of machines where this won't run (older Solaris
releases, or stripped-down machines without the packages that smpatch
needs), I'd like to point you at pca (shameless plug):

  http://www.par.univie.ac.at/solaris/pca/

mp.
-- 
Systems Administrator | Institute of Scientific Computing | Univ. of Vienna