Patch Corner: Patch news and best practice

I'd just like to make the following clear to customers:

Customers who install packages from one Update release (e.g. S10U6) on a system installed with another release (e.g. S10U3) are running an unsupported configuration.

You cannot install packages from one Update release onto a system installed with any other Update release.

The reason for this is that all available patches are pre-applied into all packages for each Update release.   Patches and packages have a many-to-many relationship.  That is, one patch can patch many packages.   One package can be patched by many patches.

If you install a package from an Update release onto a system installed with a different Update release, you completely compromise patch dependency checking.   This is likely to lead to system corruption as further patches are applied.   Hence, it is unsupported.

'patchadd' checks that dependencies are satisfied when installing a patch.  If 'patchadd' finds ANY installed package patched with a patch which satisfies the dependency, it assumes the patch is applied to all packages.  This is done for performance reasons.  Hence, if a package from a later release is installed on the system, it's pre-applied patches may fool 'patchadd' into thinking that a hard code dependency has been satisfied for all packages on the system when this is not the case.   The patch application will be allowed to continue, potentially corrupting the system.

The converse is also true.   If a package from an earlier Update is applied to a hardened system, the patch delta from that Update to the Update installed on the system plus any additional patches installed on the system would need to be applied to the package to avoid a mismatch in software levels which could lead to incorrect patch dependency resolution and hence to system corruption.  Since this is difficult to get right, adding packages from a different Update release onto an installed system is unsupported.

Please note that if a package from the same Update is applied to a hardened system, then any additional patches installed on the system that apply to the added package must be re-applied to bring that package up to the same software level as the rest of the system.  This is called "incremental patching".   This is supported, but care must be taken.  The easiest way to do this is to reapply all patches installed on the system (as listed by 'patchadd -p').  This will bring the added package(s) up to the same software level as the rest of the system.

Best Wishes,

Gerry Haskins,
Director, Software Patch Services

I'm delighted to announce the availability of 10 new free online patch training modules.

This is the result of a lot of work from those nice people in Sun Learning Services, the Install Revenue Product Engineering (RPE, a.k.a. Sustaining) team, and my own folk.

The modules concentrate on using Live Upgrade for patching, as well as providing background on Deferred Activation Patching, Kernel patches, and other useful information.

You can access the modules as follows:

• Direct link to the course: Book 3-10: Solaris Patching Best Practices: https://learning.sun.com/solc/tblocontainer/1179270477

• MyLearning: https://learning.sun.com/display/Courses/WS-2700-S10+Solaris+10+Patching+Best+Practices
  

• Link to the Sun Online Learning Center (SOLC): https://learning.sun.com/solc/smartstart

I think even experienced Sys Admins will find the modules useful in clarifying patching best practices and providing context and background information on the evolution of patching technology and best practices in Solaris 10.

If you don't like the online course format, or if you want a reference document to refer back to after taking the course, please see the attached .pdf.

Enjoy!

Best Wishes,

Gerry Haskins,

Director, Software Patch Services

I'm delighted to announce that the Solaris 10 10/09 (Update 8) Patch Bundle is now available for download by customers with a Solaris support contract.

Each Solaris Update Patch Bundle contains the equivalent set of patches which are pre-applied into the corresponding Solaris Update release image.

It is provided to enable customers who cannot upgrade for whatever reason to be able to patch systems up to the same patch level as the Update release.

Each Solaris Update is intensely tested as a unit by myriad QA teams across Sun.  Therefore, Solaris Updates and their corresponding Solaris Update Patch Bundles provide good quality "baselines" on which customers can standardize their deployments.

Standardizing deployments on such "baselines" also provides customers with a "safety in numbers" effect, as any pervasive issues are likely to be found and fixed quickly, so each customer benefits from the experience of others.

The Solaris Update Patch Bundle brings all existing packages up to the same software level as the Update release.   Any features which are entirely contained in pre-existing packages, such as Zones and ZFS functionality, are entirely available in patches and hence applying the Solaris Update Patch Bundle brings them up to the same functional level as the Update release.

However, installing the Patch Bundle is not completely equivalent to upgrading to the corresponding Solaris Update as the Patch Bundles do not include any new packages introduced in the Solaris Update release image.  Therefore, any new features which are dependent upon new packages will not be available by applying the Solaris Update Patch Bundle.

Here's a summary of the new packages in Solaris 10 10/09 (Update 8) which are not available in the Solaris 10 10/09 Patch Bundle:

SUNWhxge: SUN 10Gb hxge Ethernet Network Adapter Driver
SUNWio-tools: Administrative tools to modify the pci/pcie fabric
SUNWmrsas: LSI MegaRAID SAS2.0 HBA driver
SUNWpixman: Pixman Library
SUNWntp4r: NTPv4 (root)
SUNWntp4u: NTPv4 (usr)
SUNWntp4S: NTPv4 (source)
SUNWmptsas: LSI MPT SAS2.0 HBA driver

Please remember to apply the latest Sun Alert Cluster on top of the Solaris Update Patch Bundle in order to get all Solaris OS security, data corruption, and system availability fixes released since the final build of the Update release.

Please see previous blog entries for further details on Solaris Update Patch Bundles.

Top Tip: If you are installing in a zones environment, make sure you have the latest patch utility patches installed and Zones Parallel Patching configured before you apply a Solaris Update Patch Bundle as Zones Parallel Patching will improve non-global zone patching performance by ~300%.   See this blog entry for details.

BTW: There is no need to take any action to enable "Turbo-Charging SVR4 Package Installation" as the necessary patches are installed early on when installing the Solaris 10 10/09 Patch Bundle and will be automatically enabled for subsequent patch application when the bundle is applied to the live boot environment.  While "Turbo-Charging" has little affect when installing most patches, it does significantly speed up the application of a small number of older patches with non-optimized deletes file processing install scripts and so does speed up the Solaris 10 10/09 Patch Bundle installation somewhat.

Best Wishes,

Gerry.

I'm delighted to announce the release of the 2nd phase of our PatchFinder tool enhancements, which include:

• The ability to see the "Entitlement Classes" of patches and get information on the support contracts necessary to access and use them.  

• A "Patch Basket", into which you can add selected patches from multiple search results.

• When you click on the "Go To Patch Basket" link, the patch dependencies for all the patches you have in your Patch Basket will be dynamically resolved, including filtering out redundant dependencies.   This saves you having to manually transfer patch dependency trees!   If you already have some of these installed, you can de-select them.
  

• You can then click the "Download Selected" button to download a 'wget' script and instructions which you can use to download all of the selected patches from SunSolve.   Once you make sure you install the latest version of the patch utilities patch first, you can then use "patchadd -M" to install all the patches in the correct order on your target system.
  

Sample Searches

Let's assume you applied the Solaris 10 SPARC Recommended Patch Cluster on August 15th 2009.  So what Solaris 10 SPARC Recommended Cluster patches have been released since then ?   To find out, for "OS Release" select "Solaris 10", for "Architecture" select SPARC", select "Recommended Only", and select August 15th 2009 from the calendar beside the "Released After" box.   (Select view 50, 100, or 200 to see the entire list in one page.)   You can then decide if you want to download some of all of these patches to add to your system.  Coupled with the dynamic dependency resolution and 'wget' download capability, this effectively enables you to create customized patch clusters for yourself with just the patches you need, rather than having to download the entire Recommended Cluster each time.

Or you could bookmark a search to show you all the patches released in the last day: Simply enter the number "1" into the "Released After" box and select any other selection criteria you are interested in and click "Search".  Depending on timezone differences with respect to California and your local time of day, you may need to enter the number "2" in the "Released After" box.

You can also use PatchFinder to see what Solaris 8 Vintage patches Sun has released since Solaris 8 entered End-Of-Service-Life (EOSL) Phase 2 on April 1, 2009.   Simply select "Solaris 8" for "OS Release", select "OS Patches Only" and click "Search".  Since the patches are listed in date order, most of the patches with a release date after April 1, 2009, including patches delivering security fixes, will have the "Solaris8VintageSoftwareUpdate" Entitlement Class associated with them if you mouse-over the red padlock symbol shown for them (assuming you don't have a Solaris 8 Vintage Patch Service Plan associated with your Sun Online Account).   You will see a couple of non-Vintage patches released after April 1, 2009.  This is a transition phase and these patches address issues escalated by customers prior to April 1, 2009.

Some other sample searches to satisfy your curiosity:

Ever wondered how many patches Sun has ever released ?   To find out, simply select "Show Obsolete" and then click "Search".

How many current "active" patches does Sun have ?   De-select "Show Obsolete" and then click "Search".

How many patches can be installed on Solaris 10, including application product patches ?   For "OS Release" select "Solaris 10" (and optionally "Show Obsolete" ) and then click "Search".

How many current "active" Solaris 10 OS patches there are for SPARC ?  For "OS Release" select "Solaris 10", for "Architecture" select "SPARC" and then select "OS Patches Only" and then click "Search".

Patch Access Entitlement Classes

When you look at the list of patches returned from a search, the letter-P-in-a-circle symbol shows which patches are "Public" and can be accessed and used without a support contract.  A green open padlock symbol shows the patches you have access to thanks to the support contracts which you currently have associated with your Sun Online Account (SOA).  A red closed padlock shows the patches which you are not currently entitled to access or use with the support contracts you currently have associated with your Sun Online Aaccout.  

You can mouse-over these symbols for any patch and it will show you the "Entitlement Classes" associated with the patch. 

Read the "What is it?" help link and the SunSolve "How Entitlement Works" wiki to find out about the support contracts which you need to buy in order to access and use these patches.

Feedback

I hope you'll find the new PatchFinder enhancements useful.

We are really interested in your feedback as to what further enhancements you would like to see, so feel free to post your comments here or else use the feedback link on the PatchFinder page.

Many thanks to Brian Kidney and Julien Colomb for all their work on this - nice work guys!

I've updated the Solaris 10 Kernel PatchID sequence table in http://blogs.sun.com/patch/entry/solaris_10_kernel_patchid_progression with the latest Kernel PatchIDs for Solaris 10 10/09 (Update 8) and Solaris 10 Update 9.

The new Patching Pre-flight Checks ('ppc') tool is now available to all customers who have a support contract.

The idea for this tool comes directly from customer feedback.  

The customer wanted to reduce the cost of patching Solaris systems by enabling more junior Sys Admins to successfully patch Solaris 10 zones systems.   Their concern was that potential zones patching issues in versions of Solaris prior to Solaris 10 8/07 (Update 4) meant that they needed to assign senior System Administrators to patch such systems to identify and resolve potential issues.  

Furthermore, the customer was concerned that such issues had the potential to derail planned maintenance windows - for example, if during the patching session an unexpected issue was encountered and the patching session couldn't be completed as planned.

To address these concerns, my colleague, Ronan O'Connor, has written the Patching Pre-flight Checks tool, 'ppc'.  It can be run prior to a planned patching session to check that the target system is in a clean state ready for patching.

It's important to understand the scope of the tool.  It checks a target system (and a patch set, if supplied) for a variety of inconsistencies which could cause problems.

It looks for left over lock files from previously aborted patching or packaging operations, inconsistencies in the contents database, IDRs installed on the target system, zones "mountability", space issues, etc.  Some of these issues can occur on early versions of Solaris 10, particularly in a Zones environment.  Many of the underlying causes of such issues are fixed in the latest versions of the patch utility patches (119254 SPARC / 119255 x86), which is why we always recommend you apply the latest patch utility patches before applying other patches.

If you have a directory of patches to be applied, 'ppc' checks the integrity of those patches, and cross-checks whether any of the patches patch pkgs which have been locked down by any IDRs on the system and warns if there is a conflict.

The 'ppc' Release Notes provide information to help interpret the messages produced.

The idea is that 'ppc' can be run by a junior Sys Admin prior to a planned patching session, and any potential issues uncovered can then be analyzed by a more experienced Sys Admin.  This helps avoid nasty surprises during patches sessions and also helps to reduce the level of expertise required to patch Solaris systems, leading to cost savings for customers.

It is outside the scope of the 'ppc' tool to do root cause analysis of why the inconsistency arose or what actions may be needed, if any, to correct the situation.

If 'ppc' returns without noting any problems, you can be pretty confident that the patching session will succeed.  If 'ppc' notes potential issues, they can be investigated prior to the planned maintenance window.

The next version of 'ppc' will include a Zones consistency check to check that all zones are at a consistent patch level.   It will also contain a more sophisticated space checking algorithm.  There's no planned release date yet for Version "2.0" yet as we're awaiting feedback on Version 1.0.x first.

Some of the ideas in 'ppc' may find their way back into 'patchadd', although it's probably appropriate to keep 'ppc' as a separate tool.

To download the Patching Pre-flight Checks tool, 'ppc', go to the 'ppc' thread on the Customer Patch Forum.  If you have not accessed the Customer Patch Forum before, please see my blog entry on the initial "secret-handshake" login. 

The Patching Pre-flight Checks tool, 'ppc', and the Customer Patch Forum are only available to customers with a support contract.

We're very interested in your feedback as to the usefulness of this tool and how you'd like to see 'ppc' develop going forward.

Many thanks to Ronan O'Connor for all his work on the tool!

Best Wishes,

Gerry Haskins
Director, Software Patch Services

I am delighted to announce that Casper Dik's "Turbo-Charging SVR4 Package Install" feature enhancement is now available by downloading and installing the following patches:

119254-70 (SPARC) / 119255-70 (x86): Patch utilites patch
121428-13 (SPARC) / 121429-13 (x86): Live Upgrade Zones Support Patch
121430-40 (SPARC) / 121431-41 (x86): Live Upgrade Patch
124630-28 (SPARC) / 124631-29 (x86): System Administration Applications, Network, and Core Libraries Patch

It is important to apply 119254-70 (SPARC) / 119255-70 (x86) and 121428-13 (SPARC) / 121428-13 (x86) if the system is running non-global zones.  Otherwise booting newly installed zones will fail until the pkgserv daemon exits, about 5 minutes after zoneadm install finished.  Zones which were already installed can be booted as expected.

"Turbo Packaging" is designed to dramatically improve the performance of install, upgrade, Live Upgrade, and zone creation on Solaris 10.  It delivers only a small improvement for patching performance.   (See my Zones Parallel Patching blog entry for information on dramatic patching performance improvements.)

For background reading on the "Turbo Packaging" feature, please see
http://www.opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?messageID=358081 and http://arc.opensolaris.org/caselog/PSARC/2009/173/. 

The "Turbo-charging SVR4 Package Install" feature will also be included in the forthcoming Solaris 10 Update 8 release and will be documented in the Release Notes for that release.

Great work, Casper - well done!

My colleague, Don O'Malley, asked me to post the following on resolving issues using 'wget' to automate patch downloads.  'wget' is a popular download method, and is used by patch automation tools such as 'pca'.

Summary: You can use versions 1.10.x and 1.11.x of 'wget' but not version 1.11.  Details of options to use are set out below.  See also Patch Download Automation using wget.

SunSolve recently migrated to using Akamai for patch and patch cluster downloads, to provide customers with a faster and more reliable experience.

Some customers have experienced issues accessing patches using 'wget'.  Here's information on the issues and how to resolve them:

1) You must use a version of 'wget' which supports 'https'.

Why?

SunSolve's new patch download service is accessed by redirecting requests to https://getupdates2.sun.com, which subsequently redirects to https://a248.e.akamai.net (Akamai).

Which versions of 'wget' support 'https'?

'wget' version 1.10.x or later has 'https' support.

How can I check which version of 'wget' I am using?

Run the command 'wget --version'

2) You must use the '-O' or '--output-document' switch in 'wget' to provide an output filename.

Why?

The Akamai URI identifying a patch is very long.  By default 'wget' will name the downloaded file the same as the URI.  As the filename is too long an error is thrown and the download will fail.

Example of the correct syntax:

# /usr/sfw/bin/wget ---http-user="xxxxxxxx" --http-passwd="xxxxxxx" --no-check-certificate "http://sunsolve.sun.com/pdownload.do?target=119255-01&method=h" -O /tmp/119255-01.zip

Example of some the output for a failing 'wget' request:

140778-01.zip?AuthParam=1251205908_479a27379ab5595128ae9170de4228c9&TUrl=L0QdUQV8Z4i0fdED3QTP3SJDWA8FMyaJsHfIWf4X29kTWQpKEzIbwqFuyRPZ&TicketId=3q3wk1CPNxhU&GroupName=SWUP&BHost=sdlc2h.sun.com&FilePath=%2Fpatches%2Fpatchroot%2Fall_unsigned%2F140778-01.zip&File=140778-01.zip: File name too long

Cannot write to `140778-01.zip? AuthParam=1251205908_479a27379ab5595128ae9170de4228c9&TUrl=L0QdUQV8Z4i0fdED3QTP3SJDWA8FMyaJsHfIWf4X29kTWQpKEzIbwqFuyRPZ&TicketId=3q3wk1CPNxhU&GroupName=SWUP&BHost=sdlc2h.sun.com&FilePath=%2Fpatches%2Fpatchroot%2Fall_unsigned%2F140778-01.zip&File=140778-01.zip' (Error 0).

3) If you are using 'wget' version 1.11.x you must use the '--auth-no-challenge' switch.

Why?

This is related to the manner in which 'wget' 1.11.x sends SunSolve a users Sun Online Account (SOA) information in this version of 'wget' (i.e. via '--http-user' & '--http-passwd'.)

Failure to include the '--auth-no-challenge' with 'wget' 1.11.x requests will result in the SunSolve Software License Agreement (SLA) being downloaded rather than the patch.

Example of the syntax for 'wget' 1.11.x users:

# /usr/sfw/bin/wget --auth-no-challenge --http-user="xxxxxxxx" --http-passwd="xxxxxxx" --no-check-certificate "http://sunsolve.sun.com/pdownload.do?target=119255-01&method=h" -O /tmp/119255-01.zip

Note, 'wget' version 1.11 does not have the '--auth-no-challenge' switch and so is not compatible with patch downloads from SunSolve.

4) You must provide 'wget' with direction on how to handle security certificate information.  Otherwise, patch downloads via 'wget' will fail.

Why?

Domains, getupdates2.sun.com & a248.e.akamai.net, are signed by trusted Certificate Authorities. (Verisign for Sun's and GTE Cybertrust for the case of Akamai.) Without a pointer to these certificates being provided to 'wget', download attempts will fail.

Which certs are required?

CN=GTE CyberTrust Global Root
CN=VeriSign Class 3 Secure Server CA - G2

What kind of error message can you expect to see from a failing 'wget' request?

ERROR: Certificate verification error for getupdates2.sun.com: self signed certificate in certificate chain
To connect to getupdates2.sun.com insecurely, use `--no-check-certificate'.
Unable to establish SSL connection.

Issue resolution:

If you wish to ignore this failure you can use the '--no-check-certificate' switch in 'wget'.  Example of the syntax:

# /usr/sfw/bin/wget --http-user="xxxxxxxx" --http-passwd="xxxxxxx" --no-check-certificate "http://sunsolve.sun.com/pdownload.do?target=119255-01&method=h" -O /tmp/119255-01.zip

If you wish to check against the certificates, you can use the '--ca-certificate' switch to point to a file containing the certificates.

http://sunsolve.sun.com/search/document.do?assetkey=1-9-240066-1 has an attachment called cacerts.pem, which is a concatenation of the two certificates.

If you save this file locally (eg to /tmp/cacerts.pem), you can use a syntax similar to:

# /usr/sfw/bin/wget --ca-certificate=/tmp/cacerts.pem --http-user="xxxxxxxx" --http-passwd="xxxxxxx" "http://sunsolve.sun.com/pdownload.pl?target=142284&method=h" -O /tmp/140778-01.zip

5) You may need to add firewall rules to enable 'wget' to work with SunSolve's new download service.

Why?

As the new download service is accessed by redirecting from http//:sunsolve.sun.com to https://getupdates2.sun.com initially and subsequently to https://a248.e.akamai.net, some customers may need to update their firewall rules to pass traffic from getupdates2.sun.com & a248.e.akamai.net in addition to sunsolve.sun.com.

How can I verify this?

Contact your System Administrator.

6) After associating a new contract to a SunSolve account there is a delay of up to 48 hours before 'wget' downloads will work for patches that the new contract should provide access to.

Additionally, customers registered in the Members Support Center must make an initial 'wget' call (which will fail) in order to trigger the synchronization process after associating a new contract to their party.

Why?

The delay is due to synchronization issues between SunSolve and the back-end access entitlement system.  Work is ongoing to reduce this delay.

What error message can you expect to see until this synchronization is complete ?

HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 403 You are not entitled to retrieve this content.

7) Attempts to download a patch README file by providing "method=r" in the URI is now failing.

Why?

Prior to the latest SunSolve release it was possible to download a patch's README file only via 'wget', using a syntax similar to :

# /usr/sfw/bin/wget --no-check-certificate --http-user="xxxxxxxx" --http-passwd="xxxxxxxx" "http://sunsolve.sun.com/pdownload.do?target=142284-01&method=r" -O /tmp/142284-01.README

There's a bug in the current SunSolve release this no longer works and attempts to download a patch README using this URI will result in a file of 0 Bytes being created.  This will be fixed at a later date.

Workaround:

Use "method=tr" to download a patch README file.  Example command syntax:

# /usr/sfw/bin/wget --no-check-certificate --http-user="xxxxxxxx" --http-passwd="xxxxxxxx" "http://sunsolve.sun.com/pdownload.do?target=142284-01&method=tr" -O /tmp/142284-01.README

My colleague, Ed Clark, has made significant improvements to the Solaris 10 Recommended and Sun Alert patch clusters.  These improvements have just been released and are in the current clusters available to contract customers from the Patch Cluster & Patch Bundle Downloads on SunSolve.

Ed's improvements include:

• Filtering out "false negatives" from the patch utility return codes, so that if the cluster install script returns "1", you know you've got a real problem which needs investigating.   As you may know, the Solaris patch utility, 'patchadd', can return errors for some acceptable situations - for example, if the patch is already applied to the system, or a later revision of the patch or a patch which obsoletes it is already applied to the system, or none of the packages in the patch are on the target system (e.g. because a reduced Install Metacluster was used to install it or the system has been security hardened by package removal), etc.   Such conditions are acceptable "errors" which do not usually require further investigation by the user.  By filtering these conditions out, if the 'installcluster' script returns "1", you know it isn't because of one of these acceptable "errors", and therefore you need to look at the logfiles to find out what's gone wrong.  For further information, please see the cluster README and Analyzing a patchadd or patchrm Failure in the Solaris OS.

• The new 'installcluster' script will exit as soon as it encounters an unexpected failure - i.e. not one of the acceptable "errors" mentioned above.  This prevents potentially compounding issues by attempting to apply further patches.
  

• The new 'installcluster' script includes context intelligence for patching operations.   It informs the user when zones need to be halted, and it provides phased installation to handle patches which absolutely require an immediate reboot before further patches can be applied.  Such interim reboots are only needed when patching a live boot environment on a system below Kernel patch 118833-36 (SPARC) / 118855-36 (x86) and well as the earlier interim reboot required on x86 related to 'libc.so' patches and Kernel patch 118844-14.  On systems below these patch levels, the 'installcluster' will stop at the appropriate point when patching the live boot environment, and inform the user to reboot and re-invoke the 'installcluster' script.  (In the old cluster install script, it simply tried to carry on blindly past such interim reboots, spewing out error messages, although code in the relevant patches prevented any harm from being done).  These interim reboots, when required, are dealt with relatively early in the cluster install sequence so that once completed, the Sys Admin can leave the rest of the installation to finish unattended and move onto other systems.

• The new 'installcluster' script provides better integration with Solaris Live Upgrade as the user can now specify the Live Upgrade alternate boot environment to patch by name.

• The new 'installcluster' script performs space checking prior to installing each patch, and will halt if it believes there is insufficient space to complete the installation successfully.  For example, this helps avoid non-global zones getting out of sync regarding patch levels with respect to the global zone.  This is an important enhancement as running out of space during patching can potentially leave the system in an inconsistent state and is to be avoided.  Even removing a patch requires space, so immediate removal of a patch which has failed to apply correctly due to space issues should be avoided until sufficient space is freed up and potential issues caused by its partial installation investigated - for example, was the undo.Z file successfully created to enable backout ? (Tip: It may be better to retry the patch installation once space has been freed up rather than patch removal in such circumstances.  Contact Sun Support for instructions if you encounter such issues.).   The space checking enhancements in the 'installcluster' script are designed to prevent such problems occurring.
  

• The messages and log files produced by the 'installcluster' script are clear and well structured.  For example, a "failed" log is created if a patch fails to apply.  See the Cluster README for further information.
  

• The 'patch_order' places patches in an optimal order for installation to avoid known issues - for example, the patch utilities patches are installed as early in the sequence as possible to avoid hitting patch installation bugs which are fixed in the patch utility patches, and the Kernel patch procedural script override patch, 125555 (SPARC) / 125556 (x86), is ordered prior to 137137-09 (SPARC) / 137138-09 (x86) to resolve some known issues.  When patching an alternate boot environment (which is recommended), a small sub-set of pre-requisite patches, primarily the patch utility patches, need to be applied to the live boot environment to ensure correct patching operation.  The 'installcluster' script will check for these pre-requisite patches are halt installation if they are not present, advising the user of the 'installcluster' script option to use to install these pre-requisite patches.   Further patches may need to be installed on the live boot environment to support Live Upgrade.  See the cluster README for further information.
  

• The patches have been moved to a 'patches' sub-directory, to de-clutter the top level directory of the unzipped cluster.
  

• Please see the cluster README file for further information.  Customers should read the cluster README file and look at the Special Install Instructions in the patches within the cluster prior to installation.
  

I really want to thank Ed Clark for the enormous amount of thought and effort he has put into improving the cluster installation experience.   The work he's done on the Solaris 10 Recommended and Sun Alert patch cluster is a continuation of his previous work on the Solaris Update Patch Bundles and the Solaris 10 Live Upgrade Zones Starter Patch Bundle.  Nice work, Ed!

While the 'installcluster' script is copyrighted, I am happy for customers to use it, and the 'patch_order' file, as a starting point for their own customized patch bundles, so long as it is for their own use and is not to be given to a 3rd party or used for commercial gain (e.g. by a 3rd party maintainer or 3rd party commercial automation tool).

We have also made significant improvements to the back end processes to ensure higher and more consistent cluster quality. 

Originally, the clusters were created by the Patch Operations and Distribution (POD) team after patch release.  The POD Cluster QA process left a lot to be desired, resulting in inconsistent cluster quality.   To plug this gap, my Patch System Test team have been testing the clusters for several years, but the old process only allowed us to test them in parallel with their release, which meant that we found issues at the same time that early downloaders of the cluster encountered them.  Although we ensured such issues were fixed as quickly as possible, it still obviously compromised our customers' experience.

In the new process, the clusters are routed to Patch System Test (PST) prior to release.  PST run a transformation script on them to optimize the patch installation order, etc.  The clusters will only be released once they have passed PST testing.  This should ensure higher and more consistent quality for customers.  Work is continuing to move the entire patch cluster generation process to PST, although these future backend enhancements in this regard should be invisible to customers.

SunSolve 7.3.0 Release, Akamai, and Vintage Solaris 8 patch access entitlement

The SunSolve 7.3.0 release was deployed to production August 11th. 

It includes major changes to back-end processes designed to provide a more robust, reliable, and consistent customer experience.  All patch downloads are now serviced by Akamai, which is the same process used by Sun's patch automation tools smpatch, Update Manager, UCE, and xVM Ops Center.

Firewall rules may need to be changed to permit the access to the following systems:

• sunsolve.sun.com
• getupdates2.sun.com
• a248.e.akamai.net

The move to using Akamai to service download requests should resolve the transient "500" error issues in Squid which was impacting the reliability of patch downloads in the old SunSolve download infrastructure.

This release also removes Member Support Center (MSC) from the critical path for Solaris 8 Vintage Patch access entitlement.   Prior to this release, Vintage Solaris 8 customers needed to register in MSC in order to access Vintage Solaris 8 patches (created after April 1, 2009).  This was difficult for some customers who needed to undergo a contract clean-up process prior to full registration in MSC.  Now, such customers can simply associate their Vintage Solaris 8 Patch Plan contract number with their Sun Online Account (SOA) using the "Change Contract" link at the top right hand corner of SunSolve pages once they have logged on.  This is now sufficient to grant patch download entitlement to patches covered by any support contract, including Solaris 8 Vintage patches.

Note, customers who are registered in Member Support Center (MSC) will not see the "Change Contact" link as their contract associations are automatically handled by MSC.

For non-MSC users, to ensure access to all patches to which you are entitled, please ensure your associate your Support Contracts with your Sun On-line Account.

Recognition of Support Contract Changes

Support contracts naturally get renewed, upgraded, extended, or expire.  

When a support contract changes - for example a new line item is added to provide support for additional products - then, for non-MSC registered users, to get this additional entitlement "recognized" quickly to enable manual download of access-entitled patches covered by this additional line item, either remove and re-add the Contract number to your Sun Online Account (SOA) using the "Change Contract" link on SunSolve while logged on or else simply log out and log back in again.  Both methods will grant the additional access entitlement as long as the back-end IBIS Contract database has been updated with the modified contract information.

For Member Support Center (MSC) registered users, the contract association will be handled automatically by MSC.    (BTW: A bug in the refresh of IBIS Materialized Views has now been fixed, so delays in automate updates of contract associations by MSC should no longer occur, once the contract amendments have been inputed to the backend database.)

Patch access entitlement information

We will be improving the ability for customers to clearly determine what they are / are not entitled to access in the next release of SunSolve and the new PatchFinder tool (due in October).

In the meantime, when logged into SunSolve, go to the "Change Contract" link at the top right hand corner of SunSolve pages.

This will display the "Entitlement Classes" provided by the support contracts which you have currently associated with your Sun Online Account (SOA).  Displaying the internal "Entitlement Class" names is not ideal and will be improved in the next release, but here's how to interpret them:

• "Public": You are entitled to access Public patches - i.e. patches which don't require a support contract to access them.
• "Solaris8VintageSoftwareUpdates": You have a Solaris 8 Vintage Patch Service plan and are entitled to access Solaris 8 Vintage patches produced after April 1, 2009.  (See previous blog posting on the Solaris 8 Vintage Patch Service plan.)
• "Solaris8SoftwareUpdates": You are entitled to access non-Vintage Solaris 8 patches.
  
• "Solaris9SoftwareUpdates": You are entitled to access Solaris 9 patches.
  
• "Solaris10SoftwareUpdates": You are entitled to access Solaris 10 patches.

There are a couple of additional entitlement classes, some of which are historical artifacts which overlap with the above.  These will be cleaned up in due course.

Did you know:

• You must have a Solaris 8 Vintage Patch support plan in order to access Vintage Solaris 8 patches created after April 1, 2009
• A SunSpectrum support plan or a Solaris 8 Software Subscription entitles you to access non-Vintage Solaris 8, 9, and 10 patches
• A Solaris 9 Software Subscription entitles you to access Solaris 9 and 10 patches
• A Solaris 10 Software Subscription entitles you to access Solaris 10 patches

Another "did you know":

Many documents on SunSolve have a "Document Audience:" of "PUBLIC".  However, in the case of patch README files, this does not necessarily mean that the patches they refer to have "public" access entitlement - i.e. that anyone can download the patch without a support contract.  The README is designed to make folk aware of the existence of a patch they may need.  However, they may still need to purchase a support contract in order to access the patch itself.

Using 'wget' to automate patch downloads

'wget' is a popular and efficient way to automate patch downloads.   Popular patch automation tools such as 'pca' and TLP utilize 'wget' for patch downloads.  Authentication is via the user's Sun Online Account (SOA), so customers should associate their support contracts to their SOA using the "Change Contract" link at the top right hand corner of SunSolve pages once they have logged on.

A version of 'wget' which support https transfers is now required in order to download patches.  For example, the 'wget' version in Solaris 10 supports https transfers.  To check whether the version of wget you are using is linked to SSL (to provide https support), you can use the following command:

# wget --help.

For example, the current development releases of wget (1.12-devel) shows:

   Options: +digest +ipv6 +nls +ntlm +opie +md5/openssl -gnutls
           +openssl +gettext

You also have to have your proxy configured to allow https connections through the proxy with the 'connect' command.

When contracts are added, renewed, or changed, MSC registered 'wget' users now need to attempt a download of a access-entitled patch (which will fail) in order to trigger a resynchronization of their contract data between the backend servers servicing the patch download request.  The modified contract entitlement will then be activated within 8 hours of this initial download attempt.

See Information on using wget for http download including example download script for further information.

Solaris 2.5.1 patch access entitlement removed

Solaris 2.5.1 is past its End Of Service Life (EOSL).   Access to Solaris 2.5.1 patches has therefore been removed.

Vintage Phone support, which includes access to existing patches (but no new patches will be created) is still available for Solaris 2.6 and Solaris 7 until the end of 2009, after which all access to Solaris 2.6. and Solaris 7 patches will also be removed.

Sun Learning Services are in the process of creating a number of patch related training lessons.

They've launched a blog, which contains the initial introductory videos.

Future lessons will be much more detailed, concentrating for example on Live Upgrade.   These lessons will be available on the Sun Open Learning Center (SOLC) website: https://learning.sun.com/solc/smartstart.

I'd like to give you a heads-up on a couple of Kernel patch installation issues:

1. There was a bug (since fixed) in the Deferred Activation Patching functionality in a ZFS Root environment on x86 only.  See Sun Alert 263928.  An error message to the effect that a Class Action Script has failed to complete and failure to set up environment for Deferred Activation Patching may be seen.   The relevant CR is 6850329: "KU 139556-08 fails to apply on x86 systems that have ZFS root filesystems and corrupts the OS".    SPARC systems are similarly affected.  The following error message is returned:

mv: cannot rename /var/run/.patchSafeMode/root/lib/libc.so.1.20102 to /lib/libc.so.1: Device busy
ERROR: Move of /var/run/.patchSafeMode/root/lib/libc.so.1.20102 to dstActual failed
usage: puttext [-r rmarg] [-l lmarg] string
pkgadd: ERROR: class action script did not complete successfully

Installation of <SUNWcslr> failed.

This issue is fixed in patch in the Patch Utilities patch 119255-70 or later revision.

BTW: The principal reason ZFS Root support was implemented in Live Upgrade is so that patch application like this to the live boot environment would not be necessary.   With ZFS Root, creating a clone Boot Environment is so easy that there's no good reason not to.   This avoids the need to use technologies such as Deferred Activation Patching which attempt to make it safer to apply arbitrary change to a live boot environment, which is an inherently risky process.

2. There are reproducible issues using jumpstart finish scripts and other scenarios to install Kernel patch 137137-09 followed by Kernel patch 139555-08.   Here's the gist of the issue which I've pulled from an engineering email thread on the subject:

Issue 1: I have a customer whose system is not booting after applying the patch cluster with Live Upgrade (LU).

Solution 1: If using 'luupgrade -t', then you must ensure that latest version of LU patch is installed first, currently 121430-36 is currently the latest revision on SPARC, 121431-37 on x86. Once these patches are installed, LU will automatically handle the build of the boot archive when 'luactivate' is called, thus avoiding the problem.

Issue 2: There are other ways to get oneself into situations where a boot archive is out of sync: e.g. If using jumpstart finish scripts to apply patches that include 137137-09.  Basically any operation that involves patching to an ABE outside of 'luupgrade' will involve a manual build of boot-archive.

Solution 2: One must manually rebuild the boot-archive on the /a partition after applying the patches.  Otherwise once the system boots, the boot-archive will be out of sync.

Here's some more detail on the jumpstart finish script version of this: 

We've seen the same panic a few times when the latest patch cluster is applied via a finish script to a boot environment prior to  s10u6 via a jumpstart installation. It appears that the boot archive is out of sync with the kernel on the system. The boot archive was created from the 137137-09 patch and not updated after the 139555-08 kernel was applied, therefore the mismatch between the kernel and the boot archive.

In these instances updating the boot archive allows the system to boot successfully. Boot failsafe (ok boot -F failsafe) will detect an out of sync boot archive.  Execute the automated update then reboot.  This will now boot from the later kernel (139555-08) which successfully installed from the finish script.

I reproduced the problem in a jumpstart installation environment applying the latest 10_Recommended patch cluster from a finish script. The initial installation was S10U5 which is deployed from a miniroot that has no knowledge of a boot archive (my theory anyway).  This is similar to a live upgrade environment if the boot environment doing the patching is also boot archive unaware (meaning the kernel is pre 137137-09).

In the jumpstart scenario the immediate problem was solved by updating the boot archive by booting failsafe as previously described.  The Solution was to update the boot archive from the finish script after the patch cluster installation completed.  BTW, all patches in the patch cluster installed successfully per the /var/sadm/system/logs.finish.log.

In a standard jumpstart the boot device (install target) is mounted to /a, therefore adding the following entry to the finish script solved the problem:

/a/boot/solaris/bin/create_ramdisk -R /a

Depending on the finish script configuration, and variables the following would also work:

$ROOTDIR/boot/solaris/bin/create_ramdisk -R $ROOTDIR

Issue 3: This above issues are sometimes mis-diagnosed as CR 6850202: "bootadm fails to build bootarchive in certain configurations leading to unbootable system".

But CR 6850202 will only be encountered in very specific circumstances, all of which must occur in order to hit this specific bug, namely:

1. Install u6 SUNWCreq - there's  no mkisofs so we build ufs boot archive

2. Limit /tmp to 512M - thus forcing the ufs build to happen in /var/run

3. Have a separate /var - bootadm.c only lofs nosub mounts "/" when creating the alt root for DAP patching build of boot archive

4. Install 139555-08

You must have all 4 of above in order to hit this, i.e. step 4 must be installing a DAP patch such as a Kernel patch associated with a Solaris 10 Update such as 139555-08. 

Solution 3: Removing the 512MB limit (or whatever limit has been imposed) to /tmp in /etc/vfstab and/or adding SUNWmkcd (and probably SUNWmkcdS) so that mkisofs is available on the system is sufficient to avoid the code path that fails this way.

Booting failsafe and recreating the boot archive will successfully recreate the boot archive.

Here's further input from one of my senior engineers, Enda O'Connor:

If using Live Upgrade (LU), and LU on the live partition is up to date in terms of latest revision of the LU patch, 121430 (SPARC) and 121431 (x86), the boot-archive will be built automatically once users runs shutdown ( after luactivate to activate the new BE ).  This is done from a kill script in rcd.0.

If using a jumpstart finish script, or jumpstart profile to patch a pre-U6 image with latest kernel patches, then you need to run create_ramdisk from the finish script after all patching/packaging operations have been finished.  Alternatively, you can patch your pre-U6 miniroot to the U6 SPARC NewBoot level (137137-09), at which point the modified miniroot will handle the build of the boot_archive after the finish script has run.

If patching U6 and upwards from jumpstart, the boot_archive will get built automatically after finish script has run, so there's no issue in this scenario.

If using any home grown technology to patch or install/modify software on an Alternate Boot Environment ( ABE ), such as ufsrestore/cpio/tar for example, you must always run create_ramdisk manually before booting to said ABE.

Best Wishes,

Gerry.

The Zones Parallel Patching enhancement for the Solaris 10 patch utilities was released this week giving customers a choice of how to improve zones patching performance.

In the Zones "Update On Attach" section of a previous blog posting, I mentioned that the Zones "Update On Attach" feature could also be used to improve Zones patching perfomance.

Zones Parallel Patching is a true patching solution utilizing the 'patchadd' utility.  

Whereas Zones "Update On Attach" uses zones functionality similar to that used during zones creation to provide a pseudo-patching solution that does not utilize 'patchadd'. 

So which one to choose ?

Let's look at the two options in more detail:

Zones Parallel Patching

Zones Parallel Patching is an enhancement to the standard Solaris 10 patch utilities and is delivered in the patch utilities patch, 119254-66 (SPARC) and 119255-66 (x86).

Simply install this patch, set the maximum number of non-global zones to be patched in parallel in the config file /etc/patch/pdo.conf, and away you go.

It works for all Solaris 10 systems. 

It also works well in conjunction with higher level patch automation tools such as xVM Ops Center. 

It can dramatically improve zones patching performance by patching non-global zones in parallel.  The global zone is still patched first.

While the performance gain is dependent on a number of factors, including the number of non-global zones, the number of on-line CPUs, the speed of the system, the I/O configuration of the system, etc., a performance gain of ca. 300% can typically be expected for patching the non-global zones - e.g. On a T2000 with 5 sparse root non-global zones.

See my previous Zones Parallel Patching blog entry for further information.

Since it's a pure enhancement to 'patchadd', it's normal 'patchadd' functionality.  You can subsequently remove patches using 'patchrm', etc.  Nothing has changed except that it's now much faster to patch non global Zones with Zones Parallel Patching invoked.

Zones "Update On Attach"

The primary purpose of Zones "Update on Attach" is Zones migration from one server to another.  

For example, a database instance in a non-global zone hosted on a server has grown to the extent that the Sys Admin wants to transfer it to a better spec'd server which can better handle the workload.   The Sys Admin can detach it from the old server (e.g. a Sun4u) and reattach it to the new server (e.g. a Sun4v) using Zones "Update On Attach".   This will bring the OS Software level on the non-global zone up to the same level as the new server's global zone.

Zones "Update On Attach" can certainly be used for patching but there are limitations you need to be aware of as outlined below.

For example, detach the non-global zones from a system, apply a bunch of patches to the global zone, reattach the non-global zones using "Update On Attach" and viola, the non-global zones will be brought up to the same software level as the global zone (for OS type packages), effectively patching the non-global zones without using 'patchadd' at all.   This is typically even faster than using Zones Parallel Patching.  But there are limitations to this approach which users must be aware of (see below).

My senior engineer, Enda O'Connor, has just published an interesting article on The Zones Update on Attach Feature and Patching in the Solaris 10 OS. 

Zones "Update On Attach" limitations as a patching aid

Zones "Update On Attach" only works for packages which are SUNW_PKG_ALLZONES=true - i.e. typically OS level packages, and not application packages.

So when to use Zones Parallel Patching in 'patchadd' and when to use Zones "Update On Attach" ?

Here's what my senior engineer, Enda O'Connor, says:

"The Zones Update on Attach Feature and Patching in the Solaris 10 OS document may help customers understand how the technology works, applying a cluster via patching and via zones Update On Attach is not quite the same really.

It really depends on the patches being applied, i.e. applying a firefox patch via Update On Attach would not work if you wanted it to apply to the global zone and all non-global zones as well.

One has to understand how Update On Attach works and then apply that to the list of patches to see if it gets them to a desirable state.

There is no black or white answer here.

I'd recommend Zones Parallel Patching using 'patchadd' as it has a known outcome all the time, whereas Update On Attach makes it's own internal determination based on a number of things, that can vary from system to system ( e.g. inherited directories ).

But if time to patch is critical then if the customer does proper testing to validate things, and are happy with the results, then by all means use Update On Attach.

But using Update On Attach without:

1. Understanding how it determines what packages to update

2. Not inspecting the patches being applied.

...will most likely lead to grief at some point."

And my other senior engineer, Ed Clark, says:

"In terms of giving guidance on which technology to use, there are a number of considerations -- two of these considerations are:

1. Using Update On Attach to update sparse zones can require significantly more disk storage space than would be needed by applying patches with 'patchadd' (3-4 times as much space would not be uncommon i think), due to Update On Attach copying fully populated global zone 'undo' files into the non-global zones, as opposed to having patchadd build sparsely populated 'undo' files in the non-global zones.

2. If a customer is really concerned about the ability to back out patches reliably, then 'patchadd' is a lower risk option than Update On Attach -- 'patchrm' of a patch from a non-global zone that has a copy of the global zones 'undo' pkg data (as is the case after Update On Attach) may potentially have unexpected side effects." [although we have yet to see any actual cases of negative results from this.]

Conclusion

In general, we recommend using the Zones Parallel Patching enhancement in the patch utilities rather than the Zones "Update On Attach" feature as Zones Parallel Patching is standard patching functionality, only faster, whereas Zones "Update On Attach" is really designed for migrating zones from one server as another and was not primarily designed to speed up patching.  

Because Zones "Update On Attach" uses Zones functionality similar to the zone creation functionality, rather than 'patchadd' functionality, limitations exist on what will be patched (typically the OS but not applications) and there's the potential for anomalies around things like the "undo" files which would be used by 'patchrm' if patches applied using Zones "Update On Attach" were subsequently removed from the non-global zones using 'patchrm' (although we have yet to see any actual cases of serious issues resulting from this).

So in patching situations where time is absolutely critical, Zones "Update On Attach" may provide a good option, as long as it's well tested in the customer environment prior to deployment on production systems.

Remember too, Live Upgrade is also your friend in such situations, enabling you to patch an inactive boot environment while the system is still in production.   So a combination of Live Upgrade and Zones Parallel Patching would be ideal.

I hope you find this helpful!

Best Wishes,

Gerry.

The Solaris 10 5/09 (Update 7) patch bundle is now available for download from the SunSolve Patch Cluster & Patch Bundle Download Page.  Click on the "Solaris Update Patch Bundles" link.

As with previous patch bundles, it contains the patches which are included in the corresponding Solaris Update, in this case Solaris 10 5/09 (Update 7).

This is useful for Sys Admins who wish to bring all their systems up to the same patch level as the Solaris Update without wanting to upgrade to the release - for example, due to change control policy restrictions in their organizations.

See previous blog entries for previous Solaris Update patch bundles for further information.

The new PatchFinder tool is now available on http://sunsolve.sun.com/patchfinder/. 

It's linked off the main SunSolve Patch page, http://sunsolve.sun.com/show.do?target=patchpage.  Look for the following link immediately under the old PatchFinder search box:

The PatchFinder

Why a new PatchFinder tool ?

The old PatchFinder tool was a pet peeve of mine.  You needed to know at least the 6 digit base PatchID of the patch you were trying to find in order to find it.   Rather self defeating IMHO.

The new PatchFinder tool directly leverages Sun's internal Patch Metadata Web Services to provide a much richer search experience.

Features of the new PatchFinder tool

You can still search by PatchID if you want.  This will override all other search options.

But you can also search for all Recommended or Security patches, and restrict that search, for example, to Solaris 10 SPARC.

By the way, "Recommended" means it's part of the Solaris Recommended Patch Cluster, which contains the latest revision of all Solaris OS patches which fix Security, Data Corruption, or System Availability issues.  See the cluster inclusion criteria definitions by clicking the appropriate heading on the Patch Clusters & Patch Bundles download page, http://sunsolve.sun.com/show.do?target=patch-access.

"Security" includes all patches which address Security issues, including Solaris OS patches and application and middleware patches for other products.

If you click the "OS Patches Only" box, the search results can be restricted to patches for the Solaris OS only, which will exclude application and middleware patches which are not bundled as part of the Solaris OS.  

Caveat: Note, the interpretation of what is a Solaris OS patch used by the tool is currently about 97% accurate.  This is due to difficulties interpreting patches for applications and middleware which may be bundled with the Solaris OS.  (The old PatchFinder tool and SunSolve patch reports have the same issue.) Hence you can see anomalies between search results returned for "Recommended" and "Recommended & OS Patches Only" which should be identical.  A subsequent version will have a 100% accurate interpretation of what is a Solaris OS patch.

Advanced Search Capabilities

Click on "Show Advanced Search" for more options.

This gives you options such as searching by CR (Change Request, a.k.a. BugID) number, so if you suspect you've hit a particular bug, you can check whether a patch for that CR is available yet.

Or you can search for patches with particular words in the patch synopsis or keywords fields - e.g. ldap, "patch util", "package util", "pkg util", etc.  These options have limited value as it's difficult to guess the values.

The "Released Before" option is handy if your company has a policy of waiting for patches to "age" a specified number of days after release before you consider applying them.

The "Released After" option is useful to restrict the search to patches released since the last time you checked for patches.

The "README Modified After" option is subtly different to the "Released After" field and is a superset of the "Released After" results in that is also shows patches whose README or patchinfo metadata files have been updated since the patch was initially released - for example, Special Install Instructions may have been added to the README to specify workarounds for issues found post-release which do not warrant the patch being withdrawn from SunSolve (i.e. the patch still does more good than harm for the majority of customers).

You can filter the search further to see only those patches whose README file was modified since you last downloaded patches by using the following search filter combination: For example, if you downloaded patches 30 days ago, you can see which patches which were release 30 or more days ago have had their READMEs modified since then by using the combination: "Released Before" == 30 && "README Modified After" == 30

In all of these time related fields, you can specify actual dates instead of a specified number of days.

If you don't have a support contract, click on the "Public Patches Only" box to restrict the search to patches which are available for download without a support contract.

The "Patch Property" field enables you to search for things like "Interactive" patches which require manual intervention during installation, "NonStandard" which means they aren't applied using the standard 'patchadd' utility (e.g. firmware patches), or patches which require downtime (Single User Mode, Reboot*) if applied to the live boot environment.  (Remember, Live Upgrade can be used to minimize the downtime and risk associated with applying patches by applying the patches to an inactive boot environment, thereby avoiding such downtime requirements during or immediately after patch installation.  You can reboot to set the inactive boot environment live at a time that suits you.)

By default, only patches which are currently available for download (i.e. patches which haven't been withdrawn due to issues) are returned in the search results.    You can select "Withdrawn" patches instead to get a list of patches which have been withdrawn from SunSolve due to serious issues.   This is useful to ensure you don't have any withdrawn patches installed on your systems.  I recommend you also select "Show Obsoletes" along with "Withdrawn" so withdrawn patches which have been superseded by replacement good patches aren't masked.  (Note, a Sun Alert is issued whenever a patch is withdrawn, so if you keep abreast of Sun Alert notifications as is advisable, this step is simply a check and balance.)

Fields such as "OS Release", "State", etc., allow multiple options to be selected concurrently from the drop down menu.

Patch Metrics Gathering 

The new PatchFinder tool is also useful for helping you to calculate patch metrics - e.g. the number of Solaris 10 SPARC OS patches released in the last year.

Or, if you feel so inclined, you can use the new PatchFinder tool to calculate the percentage of Solaris OS patches which are publicly available.   Select an OS Version, select "OS Patches only", and search with and without the "Public Patches Only" box selected to get the number of publicly available patches and the total number of available patches respectively.   To save you the trouble, the percentage of Solaris OS patches which are publicly available without a support contract today (May 27th 2009) are 25% for Solaris 10 OS patches, 28% for Solaris 9 OS patches, and 31% for Solaris 8 OS patches.

Display and Bookmarking Options

You can also select the number of patches to display in each page of search results returned (default 20), hide the search form so that only the results are displayed (the option is in the top right hand corner of the tool), and order the results by PatchID, Released date, or Synopsis, in either ascending or descending order (by clicking on the appropriate column heading of the results returned).

You can click on a PatchID in the search results returned to display the Patch README.

You can also bookmark the search results returned for future reference.  This is handy if you wish to run the same query regularly. 

Help! 

There's a "Help" summary in the top right hand corner and each search field has it's own help summary marked "?".

What's next ? 

I hope you find this initial version of the new PatchFinder tool useful.

This is a start, not the finished article.   In future versions we plan to provide options to resolve patch dependencies and patch installation order, enable patch download, etc.  

Feedback - what else would you like to see ?

Feel free to provide feedback on features which you'd like to see to the software-update-finder-feedback@sun.com alias or directly to me, Gerry.Haskins@sun.com .  

Our goal is to improve your patching experience.

My colleague, Enda O'Connor, has published 3 more patching articles on Big Admin which I hope you will find useful:

• Analyzing a patchadd or patchrm Failure in the Solaris OS

  How to gather and analyze the necessary information to determine why a 'patchadd' or 'patchrm' session failed.
  

• How to Split a Root Mirrored With Solaris Volume Manager Prior to Updating Software

  How to split a Solaris Volume Manager mirror prior to updating the software through upgrades or patches.

• How to Remove a Solaris Patch While Booted From a Network or CD-ROM

  How to run 'patchrm' from a network or CD-ROM against a non-live system that is mounted from such media, and how to mount file systems under the mount point after the system is booted from the media.

I think the first article is particularly useful to help customers and support engineers understand what data to gather to enable analysis of a patching issue.  Even if you are not able to analysis the issue yourself, providing this data to Sun Support when you log a call will help speed up the issue analysis by Sun.

Solaris 10 5/09 (Update 7) and subsequent Kernel PatchIDs 

The Kernel patch included in Solaris 10 5/09 (Update 7) has now been released to SunSolve.  The PatchIDs are 139555-08 (SPARC) and 139556-08 (x86).  The rest of the patches included in Solaris 10 5/09 are either released or in the process of being released over the next week or so. 

I've updated the Solaris Kernel PatchID sequence listed in http://blogs.sun.com/patch/date/20080416 to reflect this, including the PatchIDs of the post Solaris 10 5/09 (Update 7) sustaining Kernel PatchID and the Solaris 10 Update 8 Kernel PatchID.

We will be releasing a patch bundle containing the set of patches included in Solaris 10 5/09 in the next couple of weeks.  This will be available from the "Solaris Updates Patch Bundle" section on the new look SunSolve Patch Cluster and Patch Bundle page, http://sunsolve.sun.com/show.do?target=patches/patch-access, which now includes a description of the purpose, contents, and update frequency of each patch cluster and bundle.

As always, customers need to have a valid support contract in order to download Solaris patch clusters and bundles.

New PatchFinder tool coming

We plan to release a new PatchFinder tool on SunSolve at the end of May.   This leverages the patch metadata in our release database to provide a much richer customer experience to search for patches.  Further enhancements are planned after the initial deployment.  The old PatchFinder tool will remain available for a transition period.

Zones Parallel Patching Performance Enhancement

The Zones Parallel Patching performance enhancement continues on schedule.  It has been successfully beta tested by a number of key customers who confirm a 3x performance improvement patching zones.   It is on schedule to be released in a revision of the patch utilities patch (119254 SPARC / 119255 x86) in June.

Solaris 10 "Recommended" and Sun Alert Patch Clusters

Improvements to the Solaris 10 "Recommended" and Sun Alert Patch Clusters are on schedule to be deployed before the end of June.  The improvements include an improved install_cluster script (currently available in the Solaris 10 Live Upgrade Zones Starter Patch Bundle and the Solaris 10 Updates Patch Bundles) and other process improvements designed to improve quality.

Solaris 8 Vintage Patch Support Program

The Solaris 8 Vintage Patch Support Program is now up and running.  The first Vintage Solaris 8 patches have been released.

Patches which fix SunAlerts which were issued prior to the April 1 start date of the Solaris 8 Vintage Patch Support program will be released as "normal" (i.e. non-vintage) Solaris 8 patches. 

But all other Solaris 8 patches created after April 1, including patches which fix security issues, require customers to have a Solaris 8 Vintage Patch Support contract to use them.

See http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/topics/vintagepatch/  for further information.

Here's a Solaris patch presentation (updated July 28th 2009) which I hope will be of use to customers, partners, and field engineers.

It distills much of the information contained in this blog, including the recommended patching strategy, best practices, news on patching enhancements, background information on Solaris and the bug fix process, etc.

Patching isn't a one-size-fits-all operation, but I hope you find the information provided a useful guideline.

A fix to the unzip utility is available in recent patch utility patch revisions.  This fix is required in order to be able to successfully unzip very large files such as the Solaris 10 Recommended and Sun Alert Patch Clusters.

Please download the latest revision of the patch utilities patch first and install it, before attempting to unzip the Solaris 10 Recommended or Sun Alert Patch Clusters.

The fix was incorporated in the putback to CRs 6344676 and 6464056.

The following are the earliest revisions of the patch utilities containing the fix:

• Solaris 10 SPARC: 119254-46 or above
• Solaris 10 x86:        119255-46 or above
• Solaris 9 SPARC:   112951-14 or above
  
• Solaris 9 x86:          114194-11 or above
  
• Solaris 8 SPARC:   108987-19 or above
  
• Solaris 8 x86:          108988-19 or above
  

Without the fix to unzip provided by the above patches, the following error will be seen when attempting to unzip the Solaris 10 Patch Clusters:

# unzip -q 10_Recommended.zip

note:  didn't find end-of-central-dir signature at end of central dir.
  (please check that you have transferred or created the zipfile in the
  appropriate BINARY mode and that you have compiled UnZip properly) 

In addition, do not unzip Solaris patch clusters on Windows. Solaris patch clusters, and solaris patches more generally, can contain case-sensitive file names. Consequently clusters and patches must be unzipped on a case-sensitive filesystem (corruption can occur if unzipping on filesystems that are not case-sensitive). 

The above information is now published in Infodoc http://sunsolve.sun.com/search/document.do?assetkey=1-62-252447-1

I've been asked to post a clarification: 

You cannot patch Solaris 10 from Solaris 8 or 9 as the version of 'patchadd' in Solaris 8 and 9 is totally unaware of how to handle Zones and other Solaris 10 specific features.

If using Live Upgrade to upgrade an inactive boot environment from Solaris 8 or 9 to Solaris 10, you must activate and boot into the Solaris 10 boot environment before patching it.  For example, activate and boot into the Solaris 10 boot environment, and either patch the live boot environment or create another inactive boot environment, and then apply patches to the inactive boot environment.

See http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/features/articles/live_upgrade_patch.jsp for further information.

Thanks to my colleague Enda O'Connor, who has made p7zip available for Solaris 8 SPARC, it's now possible to upgrade directly from Solaris 8 SPARC to the latest Solaris 10 Update releases such as Solaris 10 5/08 and Solaris 10 10/08.  See http://sunsolve.sun.com/search/document.do?assetkey=1-9-250526-1 and http://sunsolve.sun.com/search/document.do?assetkey=1-61-72099-1 for details.

Previously, due to the lack of p7zip on Solaris 8, customers needed to perform an interim upgrade to Solaris 9 or an earlier Solaris 10 release before upgrading to the latest Solaris 10 release.

The following is now published as Infodoc 208057:

To whom it may concern,

Over time, customers may experience space issues in /var as patch "undo" and "obsolete" data, which is stored for use during patch backout, builds up as more patches are applied to the system.

It is best to plan for this expansion of /var in advance,  and allocate plenty of free space to this partition. 

How much space to allocate to /var depends on a number of variables, such as how many patches are likely to be applied to the system, which is dependent on frequency of patching, strategy of which patches will be applied (all, sun alert, security only, etc.), products patched; whether the system has zones which implies 'pspool' space requirements, etc.  A figure of 10Gb to 20Gb or even more is not unreasonable.   In my Patch System Test lab, we currently have Solaris 10 systems with >7GB used in /var and this will continue to grow over the lifetime of Solaris 10.

If you have insufficient space in /var of an existing system, the recommended solution is to extend the size of the /var partition.  This can be accomplished by backing up /var, creating a bigger /var partition on another disk, restoring the /var backup onto that partition and then updating the /var entry in the /etc/vfstab file.  If /var is part of the "/" (root) partition, then relocating /var to a separate partition would be a good solution.  The relocation process is documented in Infodoc 215988.

Sun strongly discourages manual modifications to the /var/sadm/pkg directory and its file structure.  That directory structure should only be modified by the Solaris[TM] patching and packaging utilities.  Corruption in this directory structure will prevent any future packaging or patching operations.

Below is information on how to free up space in /var by deleting certain patch related files.  This should only be used when there are no other ways of gaining space in /var.

Having a full and current backup of the OS is highly recommended before deleting files from /var.

On behalf of Sun Microsystems, I hereby confirm that unneeded "obsolete" and "undo" files may be removed from the /var/sadm/pkg/<pkgname>/save/<PatchID> and "undo" files from the /var/sadm/pkg/<pkgname>/save/pspool/<pkgname>/save/<PatchID> directories in order to free up space in /var.

This will not invalidate support contracts.

The "undo" files are used during the patch removal process. Removing the "undo" files associated with a patch means that it will no longer be possible to uninstall the patch.

Once a later revision of a patch is applied, or a patch which obsoletes a patch is applied, the "undo" files in /var/sadm/pkg/<pkgname>/save/<PatchID> are renamed "obsolete".  These "obsolete" files may also be removed.

It is strongly recommended to only remove the "obsolete" and "undo" files for patches which the customer is confident will not need to be backed out - for example rejuvenated Kernel patches associated with Solaris 10 Update releases such as 118833-36 (SPARC) / 118855-36 (x86), 120011-14 (SPARC) / 120012-14 (x86), etc. and other older Kernel patch revisions.  See the sequence of Solaris 10 Kernel PatchIDs listed on http://blogs.sun.com/patch/date/20080416

As patches containing subsequent fixes to the objects contained in these rejuvenated patches will have a SUNW_REQUIRES dependency on the these rejuvenated patches, it's extremely unlikely that older versions of these rejuventated Kernel patches will ever be backed out.   Therefore, their "undo" files are prime candidates for removal to free up space in /var if required and it's not possible to extend /var.

All the "undo" or "obsolete" files for a particular patch should be removed from the /var/sadm/pkg/<pkgname>/save/<PatchID> directories. For example:

rm /var/sadm/pkg/*/save/118833-36/undo*

The system also keeps a copy of "undo" files for use during creation of new non-global zones. These may also be removed if the customer is confident that the patches will not need to be backed out. For example:

rm /var/sadm/pkg/*/save/pspool/*/save/118833-36/undo*

The "undo" files in the pspool directory are not renamed to "obsolete" when a later revision is installed.

Further Information:

1. The "undo" files are specific to the zone of the system on which they were created during application of a patch by patchadd. Therefore, do not copy the "undo" file from one zone to another or from one system to another.

2. One could potentially archive the "undo" files for each zone of a system and restore it to that zone if desired.

Best Wishes,

Gerry Haskins
Director, Software Patch Services

This blog entry expands on a previous blog entry regarding Solaris patch entitlement.  

The Solaris patch entitlement policy is available on http://sunsolve.sun.com/search/document.do?assetkey=1-61-203648-1. "Entitlement" refers to patches which require you to have a valid support contract to access them.

Solaris changed its business model a few years ago from selling Solaris and providing patches for free to a model of giving away the Solaris releases for free and charging for patches.

The Solaris patch entitlement policy applies to all Solaris Operating System patches.  It does not necessarily apply to middleware or application layer product patches which may be installed on top of Solaris, such as SunStudio, Java, etc.

The Solaris patch entitlement policy is that the following Solaris OS patches will remain available irrespective of whether or not you have a valid support contract:

• the specific patch revisions which introduce all new security fixes
• the specific patch revisions which introduce certain hardware support
• all revisions of Solaris patch utility, smpatch, and Update Manager patches to ensure correct patch application
  
• the specific pre-requisite patch revisions for Live Upgrade
  
• the specific pre-requisite patch revisions for certain Sun software application products
• all revisions of patches which patch products which are both bundled as part of Solaris and also released as separate products which don't enforce patch entitlement
  
• a small number of other specific patch revisons at the discretion of Sun
• any patch revision explicitly required by any of the above patches
  

Other Solaris OS patches require that you have a valid support contract to access them.

All fixes will all be available for free in the next Solaris 10 Update release, so if you are not willing to pay for a support contract, you can still get the fixes by installing or upgrading to the next Solaris 10 Update release.  You'll just need to wait for it to be released.

The key point is that if you may need timely access to a patch which fixes a critical non-security issue, then you need to have a valid support contract for each system you may wish to patch.  You also need to have a valid support contract in order to get telephone support or fixes coded for any issues which are unique to your environment.

So it's highly advisable for you to have a valid support contract in place for each production system.

If you are a home user for example, and don't want to go to the expense of buying a support contract, using OpenSolaris or waiting for the next Solaris 10 Update release are valid options.

This policy is not changing.

What is changing is the implementation of patch entitlement to ensure it matches the policy.  Currently, circa 60% of Solaris OS patches are available without a support contract, including most of the key patches.  Under the new entitlement implementation, 18% of Solaris OS patches will remain available without a support contract.  The rest will require a valid support contract to access. 

Any of the following support contracts will provide you with access to all Solaris OS patches and patch clusters: a Solaris subscription, a Software Support Contract, a Sun System Service Plan for Solaris, a Sun Spectrum Storage Plan, or a Sun Spectrum Enterprise Service Plan.  Since the names of the support contracts change from time-to-time, this list may change.

If you are running Solaris on Sun Hardware, I suggest you consider purchasing a SunSpectrum System Plan.  This will cover both your HW and OS with one simple support contract.

If you are running Solaris on non-Sun hardware, you should consider a Solaris Subscription Support Plan, which is available on-line from just $324 per year.

Remember, you need a support contract for each system you wish to patch, so if you need more of a site-wide support plan, Solaris Everywhere is a good choice. 

BTW: It's important to remember that hardware warranties do not cover software support or access to Solaris patches.

The new implementation will roll out in phases, starting this week.

You should check that you have valid support contracts in place for each system you may need to patch.  Please do not wait until you need a patch to put the support contract in place. There is a latency of several days between subscribing for a support contract and patch access being granted.  Support for your production Operating System really isn't something you should play "chicken" with.

The new Solaris OS patch entitlement implementation roll-out should be completely transparent if you have a valid support contract for each system you wish to patch.

A PodCast talking about the above and the Solaris 8 Vintage program which commences April 1, 2009 is available here

The following is now available as Infodoc 249046:

What follows is an open letter to customers in response to customer confusion over how to handle the "rebootimmediate" and "reconfigimmediate" flags specified in some patches.

Despite the READMEs of patch clusters which contain such patches clearly stating that during a patching session, a reboot is only required in exceptional and documented circumstances, it has come to my attention that some customers are initiating reboots after applying every single patch in a patch set which specifies such flags.  Not surprisingly, such customers are concerned at the length of time this takes.

Open Letter with definitive interpretation of the "rebootimmediate" and "reconfigimmediate" patch flags

To whom it may concern,

Summary: When patching a live boot environment, it is usually OK to apply any number of patches before performing a single reboot at the end, even if multiple patches specify "rebootimmediate" or "reconfigimmediate".  On the rare occasion when it is found that this is not possible, specifically for 118833-36 (SPARC) and 118855-36 (x86) and 118844-14+ (x86), code will typically be inserted into the relevant patches to prevent the application of further patches which could cause problems.  Use of Live Upgrade to patch an inactive boot environment is recommended as it avoids the need for interim reboots for even these atypical patches.  Details below.

The "reboot" metadata flags which may be contained in the patch 'pkginfo' file(s) have the following meaning:

rebootafter - a reboot is required to activate some of the content delivered in the patch, but the system remains in a consistent state until the reboot is performed.

reconfigafter - a reconfiguration reboot is required to activate some of the content in the patch, but the system remains in a consistent state until the reconfiguration reboot is performed.

rebootimmediate - the system is in a potentially inconsistent state until the system is rebooted.  The objects applied in the patch are potentially inconsistent with processes running in memory.  Normal production must not be resumed until a reboot takes place to bring the system back into a fully consistent state.  However, since the footprint of the patch utilities is relatively small, it is normally OK to continue to apply further patches before initiating the reboot.   In cases where this is not OK, the patch in question will typically contain additional code to prevent further patches from being applied until the reboot takes place*.  Since the system is in a potentially inconsistent state, it's advisable to avoid running any additional processes until the reboot takes place.  If patch automation tools are being used to apply "rebootimmediate" or "reconfigimmediate" patches, it's up to the automation tools' QA to ensure that their additional code footprint does not hit the potential inconsistent system state when applying such patches.

reconfigimmediate - exactly the same as rebootimmediate, except a reconfiguration reboot is required.

*This is the case with Kernel patch 118833-36 (SPARC) / 118855-36 (x86), whose patch scripts replace 'patchadd' with a no-op telling the user to reboot the system.  The only other known reboot required before further patching can be done is specific to x86, and only if the system is running at a Kernel patch level below 118844-14.  A later revision of 118844, e.g. 118844-20, needs to be applied and the system rebooted to ensure the Kernel running in memory is compatible with library changes supplied in the libc patch 121208-02.  The prepatch script in 121208-02 and -03, and 118855-xx which obsoletes it, contains code to ensure 118844-14 or later is installed and active on the system.  (BTW, 118844-14 wasn't released. 118844-20 is recommended to fulfill the libc compatibility requirement.)

UPDATE, Jan 20, 2009: Murphy's Law strikes again!.  There's currently an issue, CR 6704883, with the "Sun Fibre Channel Device Drivers" patches 125184-05, -06, -07, and -08 (SPARC) and 125185-05, -06, -07, and -08 (x86) as described in Sun Alert 238630.  The fix for this issue is in rev-09 of the patches which is currently available as a T-Patch and will be released shortly.  Rev-09 of the patches uses modloading in its prepatch script to avoid the issue.  In the meantime, a workaround is to apply the affected patches last, immediately prior to rebooting the system.  The patches in the Solaris 10 10/08 patch bundle were specifically ordered to avoid this issue.  Where such issues are found, SunAlerts are published and the issue fixed.

Remember, patches can be downloaded and installed individually.  Therefore, each patch which requires a reboot must specify the reboot requirements.  But if patches are installed collectively in the same patching session, for example, as part of a patch cluster, then the install instructions contained in the cluster README file take precedence - e.g. that reboots are only required *during* patching sessions for the specific cases mentioned above.

Since the above patches were created, a significant enhancement has been made to the Solaris patch utilities called Deferred Activation Patching.  This enhancement is not retrospective, so the above historical problematic patches remain.

Deferred Activation Patching

The problem with the above atypical patches is that the new code they deliver may be invoked by the original patchadd code and the utilities it calls *during* patch installation.  A patch may patch many packages.  The packages are applied in alphabetic order.  In a Zones environment, the patch is applied to the global zone first, then to each non-global zone.

In the case of 118833-36 (SPARC) / 118855-36 (x86), the new versions of the libdevinfo.so.1 and libsec.so.1 libraries delivered in the patch could be invoked by patchadd and are potentially incompatible with the processes running in memory.

The solution devised in the patch scripts contained in 118833-36 (SPARC) / 118855-36 (x86) is to overlay mount the old objects on top of the newly laid down objects using the loopback filesystem (lofs).  This ensures that the system remains in a consistent state *during* the patch process as the old library versions which are compatible with what's running in memory will be called.

To avoid the application of further patches, which patch the same objects as 118833-36 (SPARC) / 118855-36 (x86), from patching the overlay mounted objects instead of the patched objects, 118833-36 (SPARC) / 118855-36 (x86) replace 'patchadd' with a no-op telling the customer to reboot the system before applying any further patches.

During reboot, the loopback filesystem mounts are torn down exposing the patched objects.  Further patching can now continue as the system is in a fully consistent state.

This loopback filesystem mount solution is the basis of Deferred Activation Patching.  After patch 118833-36 (SPARC) / 118855-36 (x86) was released, the solution was perfected and moved to the patch utilities.  The few patches which require application using Deferred Activation Patching specify the SUNW_PATCH_SAFE_MODE=true flag in their pkginfo files.  The solution was enhanced so that any subsequent patch applied prior to a reboot of the system, which patches the same objects as a patch explicitly specifying Deferred Activation Patching, will itself be automatically applied in Deferred Activation Patching mode.   This is known as implicit Deferred Activation Patching and enables other patches to be applied on top of a patch applied using Deferred Activation Patching without the need for an intervening reboot.  When a patch specifying Deferred Activation Patching mode is applied to a system, the user will see lots of loopback filesystem mounts on the system until such time as the reboot takes place.  Upon reboot, the loopback filesystem mounts are torn down, exposing the newly patched objects.

Kernel patch 12001[12]-14 which is included in Solaris 10 8/07 (Update 4), Kernel patch 12712[78]-11 which is included in Solaris 10 5/08 (Update 5), and Kernel patch 13713[78]-09 which is included in Solaris 10 10/08 (Update 6), are currently the only patches which specify application in Deferred Activation Patching mode.  Future Kernel patch included in future Solaris 10 Update releases are the likely candidates requiring application using Deferred Activation Patching.

With the introduction of Deferred Activation Patching, it is highly unlikely that future patches will require an interim reboot before further patches can be applied.

The problems with the system getting into an inconsistent state *during* patching (which Deferred Activation Patching resolves) could only occur when patching a live boot environment as it's due to the interaction between newly patched objects which are incompatible with processes running in memory being invoked prior to the system being rebooted.

To avoid this and other issues, Sun strongly recommends the use of Live Upgrade to patch (or upgrade) an inactive boot environment, which dramatically reduces the risk and downtime associated with patching.  For example, even though Deferred Activation Patching resolves the inconsistency issue, patching a live boot environment takes time and the system is out of production.

Using Live Upgrade, the inactive boot environment is patched, potentially while the system is still in production.  Issues such as those described above with Kernel patch 118833-36 (SPARC) / 118855-36 (x86), and 118844-20 (x86) simply don't apply when patching an inactive boot environment as there is no interaction between the objects being patched and the processes running in memory, as all the calls patchadd makes will be to the objects on the live partition, not the patched objects on the inactive partition.  A single reboot is required to boot into the new boot environment.

Another advantage of Live Upgrade is that if a problem arises with the new boot environment for whatever reason, the user can simply reboot back into the old boot environment to enable production to resume and the issues with the now inactive boot environment can be resolved later.

Best Wishes,

Gerry Haskins
Director, Software Patch Services

New title, same role, same me

I was promoted to Director, Software Patch Services in September.  The last couple of months have been quite hectic, as I've suddenly got a whole new bunch of buddies in Marketing and elsewhere who want some of my time.  That's a good thing, and I believe it will help me to drive and co-ordinate improvements for you, our customers, patching experience. 

Resources are limited and, as always, I'm interested in getting your thoughts as to what areas I should concentrate on next.  

Some of the stuff we're currently working on is outlined below as well as other information which I hope you will find useful.

Solaris 10 10/08 Patch Bundle

The Solaris 10 10/08 Patch Bundle, which delivers the equivalent set of patches to the Solaris 10 10/08 (Update 6) release image, is now available from SunSolve.  See my blog entry below on the Solaris 10 5/08 (Update 5) Patch Bundle for further information on why we produce it, what it contains, why you might wish to use it, how to download it, etc.

Recommended and Sun Alert patch cluster contents updated

I discussed the purpose of, and difference between, the Solaris Recommended and Sun Alert patch clusters in a previous blog posting. To recap:

The "Recommended" Cluster contains the latest revision of any Solaris OS patch which addresses a Sun Alert issue.  That is, a fix for a Security, Data Corruption, or System Availability issue.  The cluster also contains the latest revision of the patch utility patches to ensure correct patch application and any patch required by any other patch in the cluster.

The Sun Alert Cluster is newer, and contains the minimum revision of any Solaris OS patch which addresses a Sun Alert issue. The cluster also contains the latest revision of the patch utility patches to ensure correct patch application and any patch required by any other patch in the cluster.  Therefore, the Sun Alert Cluster provides the minimum amount of change to fix all Solaris OS Sun Alert issues. 

Both clusters are updated whenever a new patch meeting their inclusion criteria is released.  The Sun Alert Cluster changes less frequently than the "Recommended" Cluster as it contains only what is really needed to address Sun Alert issues and apply the patches.

One of my team members has been reconciling the cluster contents against the Sun Alert reports and the cluster contents have been updated as a result.  Some issues where found, largely to do with patches for things like GNOME which are also part of the Solaris OS.  A process has been put in place to ensure the cluster contents match the patches specified in the Sun Alert reports.   

Keeping as up to date as possible with the SunAlert or Recommended Cluster contents is advisable.   Remember also to keep firmware up to date.

BTW: The monthly EIS (Enterprise Installation Standards) patch baseline is based upon the Recommended Cluster contents but also includes ca. 150 additional patches to address irritants which are not Sun Alert fixes and includes patches for SunCluster, SunVTS, etc.  The monthly EIS patch baselines are available through xVM Ops Center and Sun Proactive Services.

I am planning to merge the Recommended and Sun Alert patch clusters into a single cluster using the Sun Alert cluster criteria as having two very similar clusters tends to confuse customers unnecessarily.  

I also intend to merge the two cluster pages on SunSolve as one is essentially a better formated subset of the other. 

ZFS and Zones features fully contained in patches

As I've mentioned previously, there's effectively a single customer visible code branch for each Solaris named release.  That means that there's one set of patches for all of Solaris 10, a separate set for Solaris 9, and a separate set for Solaris 8.  Within a named release, e.g. Solaris 10, the same set of patches will apply to any of the Solaris 10 releases, from the original Solaris 10 3/05 release right up to the current Solaris 10 10/08 (Update 6) release.  This simplifies System Administration and enables Sun to provide very long term support at reasonable cost for each Solaris named release. 

A consequence of effectively having a single code branch for each Solaris named release is that any change to pre-existing packages will be delivered in patch format.

New features are typically only added to the current Solaris named release, which is currently Solaris 10.  (They are also available via OpenSolaris.)

This means that if new features don't add any new packages, then the entire feature functionality is fully available in patches.  Customers can utilize the new features by simply applying the appropriate patches to their existing Solaris 10 system.  This is the case with all current Zones and ZFS* functionality, including neat features like ZFS Root, ZFS Boot, and Zones "Update on Attach".

Other features which deliver new packages are only available from the Solaris Update release in which they were first included.  So, for example, if a new package was first delivered in Solaris 10 8/07 (Update 4), then a customer wishing to use that feature would need to install or upgrade to the Solaris 10 8/07 (Update 4) or subsequent update release image.   Such features are not available in patches.

*OK, we cheated with ZFS.  ZFS does deliver new packages, but they are streamed into existence from a patch.  This type of patch is called a "genesis" patch, but they are hard to perfect, so we don't intend to release any more "genesis" patches.

Improving Zones Patching Performance

Zones Parallel Patching

My team has been working with those awfully nice folks in the Sustaining organization to deliver a Zones Parallel Patching enhancement to the patch utilities to dramatically improve Zones patching performance.  We have a fully stable prototype which has been given to selected Beta customers to trial. 

For a simple T2000 with 5 sparse non-global zones, the performance improvement is >3x.  On systems with optimized I/O (as Zones patching is primarily I/O bound), we expect the performance improvement to be even better.  A configuration file will allow users to select how many Zones to patch in parallel.  This will typically equate to the number of processors or threads available on the target system.

The general release of this feature is planned for April 2009.

Zones "Update on Attach" 

The Kernel patch associated with Solaris 10 10/08 (Update 6), 137137-09 (SPARC) / 137138-09 (x86) contains some cool new features, such as ZFS Root, ZFS Boot, and Zones "Update on Attach".  Beware, installing this patch requires significant free disk space to install!  See Sun Alert http://sunsolve.sun.com/search/document.do?assetkey=1-66-246207-1

Zones "Update on Attach" is a very cool feature indeed.

For example, if the patch level of non-global Zones is out-of-sync with respect to the global Zone, e.g. because the non-global Zones ran out of disk space during patch application, Zones "Update on Attach" provides a very neat way to bring the Zones back into sync.  Simply detach the affected non-global Zones, apply Kernel patch 137137-09 (SPARC) / 137138-09 (x86) to the global zones, and reattach the affected non-global Zones using 'zoneadm -z <zone-name> attach -u'.  The non-global Zones will be automagically updated to the same patch level as the global Zone.  Neat!

There are other interesting possibilities.  For example, detach all non-global Zones, apply an arbitrary set of patches to the global Zone (including 13713[78]-09), and reattach the non-global Zones using 'zoneadm -z <zone-name> attach -u'.  Viola!, the non-global Zones will be automagically updated with all of the patches applied to the global Zone.  Way neat!  And more importantly, way faster than even the Zones Parallel Patching solution we're working on.  And even better, it's available now!  This could be a key solution for customers having difficulty completing patching updates on Zones systems during tight maintenance windows.

We are working to explore potential caveats.  For example, when a patch is applied using 'patchadd' to a non-global zone, an "Undo.Z" file containing the data necessary to back out the patch is created specifically for each non-global zone to which the patch is applied.   Using Zones "Update on Attach" to patch non-global Zones will cause the "Undo.Z" file from the global Zone to be propagated to the non-global Zones.  This could theoretically cause issues if the patch is subsequently backed out (e.g. data from global Zone config files could potentially be merged into non-global Zone config files during patch backout which could potentially cause issues), although we've never actually encountered such an issue.  BTW: The same caveat applies to creating non-global Zones after the global Zone has been patched.  Again, we have yet to see this causing an actual issue, so it appears to be more of a theoretically caveat than a practical issue.

Improvements to 'smpatch' and Update Manager

The way the PatchPro analysis engine for 'smpatch' and Update Manager used to work was fine in theory, but in practice was what I call "a process with too many moving parts".   Too many steps had to happen correctly for the overall result to be correct.  In Six Sigma terms, there was too much error opportunity.  Occasionally, it would end up recommending a SPARC patch for an x86 system or a Solaris 8 patch for a Solaris 10 system.  Not surprisingly, its reputation suffered.

I'm pleased to say that a major overhaul to dramatically simplify the back end processing of 'smpatch' and Update Manager has just been rolled out by their engineering team.  The way 'smpatch' and Update Manager work is that Realization Detector(s) are associated with each patch.  These Realization Detectors determine whether it's appropriate to recommend a patch for application on a target system.  In the vast majority of cases, the Realization Detectors are simply comparing the packages contained in the patch to the packages installed on the system to see if the patch is applicable.  The enhancement is to replace these myriad Realization Detectors, which could potentially contain coding bugs, with a single Generic Realization Detector to map patch packages to packages on the target system.  It looks at the package name, package version, and package architecture fields (in pkginfo) for each package in the patch, and compares them to the same values for the packages installed on the target system.  If they match, the patch is recommended, else not.  Guess what, this is exactly how 'patchadd' decides whether a patch is applicable or not when installing a patch.  It's also how 'pca' works too in determining which patches to apply.

A few specialist Realization Detectors remain for a small number of patches which require special handling.

The changes to 'smpatch' and Update Manager should dramatically improve the reliability of these tools and the accuracy of their patching recommendations.

One remaining distinction between 'smpatch' / Update Manager and 'pca' is that 'pca' "knows" about all current Sun patches via the patchdiag.xref file, whereas 'smpatch' / Update Manager "knows" about all patches containing a 'patchinfo' file, including older patch revisions.  All Solaris OS and Java Enterprise System (middleware) patches contain a 'patchinfo' file.  These account for 49% of patches.  For patching the Solaris OS, the tools should produce similar results.  A decision was made not to "auto-include" all other patches for 'smpatch' and Update Manager, as it was felt that the explicit step of the patch creator including a non-blank PATCH_CORRECTS realization detector specification line in the 'patchinfo' file to signal that the patch was suitable for patch automation was potentially useful.  (Don't worry about what value the PATCH_CORRECTS field has.  This is overriden by the Generic Realization Detector in the vast majority of cases.  It has no meaning from a customer perspective.)

This enhancement is not an attempt to undermine 'pca'.  It's simply to improve 'smpatch' and Update Manager.  I will continue to work closely with Martin Paul to give him heads-ups on any initiative which may impact 'pca' and resolve any issues with patchdiag.xref.

One thing I want to do when I can free up some resources, is a comparative study of the patching recommendations of the various available patch automation tools, 'smpatch' / Update Manager, 'pca', UCE (a.k.a Sun Connection Satellite),  xVM Ops Center*, and TLP (Traffic Light Patching) which is used by Sun Proactive Services to provide tailored patching solutions for customers in conjunction with SRAS (Sun Risk Analysis Service) and the EIS (Enterprise Installation Standards) methodology, with a view to ensuring that the patching recommendations of the various tools are coherent and consistent, with the higher value tools providing more sophisticated analysis.  It's part of my efforts to co-ordinate patching improvements to improve our customers' patching experience.

*xVM OC also utilitizes the monthly EIS patch "baselines".

Same Patch Entitlement policy, new Patch Entitlement implementation

Solaris changed its business model a few years ago from selling Solaris and providing patches for free to a model of giving away the software releases for free and charging for patches. 

The policy is that patches delivering new security fixes will remain free to all customers, irrespective of whether or not they have a support contract, but most other patches require that customers have a valid support contract to access them.  (See my earlier blog entry on the subject.)

All fixes will all be available for free in the next Solaris Update release (and OpenSolaris), so customers not willing to pay for a support contract can still get the fixes by installing or upgrading to the next Solaris Update release.  They'll just need to wait for it to ship.  Alternatively, they can use OpenSolaris.

This policy is not changing.

What is changing is the implementation of patch entitlement to ensure it matches the policy.  Currently, circa 60% of Solaris patches are free, including most of the key patches.  Under the new entitlement implementation, 18% of Solaris patches will remain free, including the specific revision of all Solaris patches which include new security fixes.  The rest will require a valid support contract to access. 

Any of the following support contracts will provide access to all Solaris patches and patch clusters: a Solaris subscription, a Software Support Contract, a Sun System Service Plan for Solaris, a Sun Spectrum Storage Plan, or a Sun Spectrum Enterprise Service Plan.  Since the names of the support contracts change from time-to-time, this list may change.

The new implementation will roll out in Phases, starting this month.  The roll-out should be transparent to customers with valid support contracts.

Patch signing certificate renewal

The signing certificate used to sign Sun patches expires shortly.  A new signing certificate will be rolled out in January and instructions provided on how to adopt it.

Customers who download the unsigned patch versions will not need to take any action.

"Accumulation-only" patches

The "SplitGate" source code management model we first introduced in Solaris 10 8/07 (Update 4) has dramatically improved Solaris 10 patch quality.  A side-effect of the "SplitGate" model is that base PatchIDs (the first 6 digits) change at the end of each Update release.  See my earlier Solaris 10 Kernel PatchID Sequence posting.

In the "SplitGate" model, when building an Update release, we effectively have two parallel source code gates, one called the Sustaining Gate containing just the bug fixes we need to release to customers in patches asynchronous to the Update release, and the other called the Update Gate containing a superset of the the Sustaining Gate and as well as new features and less critical bug fixes which will be released as part of the Update release. 

The two gates remain separate (split) for the duration of the Update release build process.  Once the Update release has reached release quality, the Update Gate is promoted to become the new Sustaining Gate and the process repeats.  Since the Update Gate is always a strict superset of the Sustaining Gate, no regressions should result from the promotion of the Update Gate to become the new Sustaining Gate.  Each patch in the old Sustaining Gate is obsoleted by a corresponding patch from the Update Gate which has accumulated its contents.  When the Update is released, these new PatchIDs are released to SunSolve.  This is why you see the base PatchIDs changing after each Update release. 

If the Update Gate patch doesn't contain any additional code changes over the corresponding Sustaining Gate patch, then there's no need for customers to install the new Update Gate patch.  Such patches are called "accumulation-only" patches and can be identified as they have a different base PatchID (the first 6 digits) but don't contain any additional CR numbers over the Sustaining patch which they obsolete.

The reason Sun releases these "accumulation-only" patches is because some customers insist that all of the PatchIDs pre-applied into a Solaris Update release image be also available from SunSolve.

The Solaris 10 Live Upgrade Zones Starter Patch Bundle has been released.  It is designed to make it simpler for customers running on systems below Solaris 10 5/08 (Update 5) to apply the pre-requisite patch level needed to be able to utilize basic Live Upgrade functionality in a Zones environment.  These patches need to be applied to the live boot environment to enable Live Upgrade to work correctly in a Zones environment.

Aside: Customers with systems running Solaris 10 5/08 (Update 5) or later already have all the  pre-requisite patches pre-installed on the live boot environment and hence do not need to apply this patch bundle.

After this, Live Upgrade itself can be used to create an inactive boot environment and apply any additional patches referenced in SunSolve document 206844 'Solaris[TM] Live Upgrade Software: Minimum Patch Requirements' (formerly Infodoc 72099) to provide advanced Live Upgrade functionality such as support for ZFS Root. The document is available from: http://sunsolve.sun.com/search/document.do?assetkey=1-61-206844-1

The Solaris 10 Live Upgrade Patch Bundle is available from the normal patch cluster download center on SunSolve.  To download the patch bundle, login to SunSolve, http://sunsolve.sun.com , click on the Patches and Updates link, click on Recommended Patch Clusters, and scroll down the window under the heading "Recommended Solaris Patch Clusters, J2SE and Java Enterprise System Clusters" to find the "Solaris 10 SPARC Live Upgrade Zones Starter Patch Bundle" or "Solaris 10 x86 Live Upgrade Zones Starter Patch Bundle".  As always, you need a valid support contract to access patch clusters.  See previous postings for further information on support contracts.

My colleague, Enda O'Connor, has written another useful article on Big Admin about patching using Live Upgrade, restrictions, and how-to use Live Ugrade to upgrade/patch from Solaris 8 or Solaris 9 to Solaris 10.  See http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/features/articles/live_upgrade_patch.jsp

Last week, the Solaris 10 05/08 (Update 5) Patch Bundle was released on SunSolve.  The patch bundle provides another option to customers when deciding their patching strategy to maintain their Solaris systems.

What is the Solaris 10 05/08 Patch Bundle ?

The Solaris 10 05/08 Patch Bundle contains the equivalent set of patches contained in the Solaris 10 05/08 (Update 5) release image.

Why use the Solaris 10 05/08 Patch Bundle ?

The Solaris 10 05/08 Patch Bundle was created as a result of direct customer feedback after the Solaris 10 08/07 (Update 4) release.  New hardware may require a specific minimum Solaris 10 Update release such as the Solaris 10 05/08 (Update 5) release.  Some customers may wish to bring their other existing Solaris 10 systems up to the same patch level as the new hardware running Solaris 10 05/08.  The recommended way to do this is to upgrade the existing systems to the Solaris 10 05/08 release using either regular Solaris Upgrade or Solaris Live Upgrade.  But some customers may have policies in place which make it difficult to upgrade but OK to patch a system.  The Solaris 10 05/08 Patch Bundle facilitates such customers to bring their existing systems up to the equivalent patch level to the Solaris 10 05/08 (Update 5) Release.  In theory, this should mean that pre-existing functionality on all of the customers' systems should react the same, warts and all. This makes for a more homogeneous environment which may help lower support costs.

The Solaris 10 Update releases are very intensely tested by a wide variety of QA teams within Sun.  Therefore, the functionality contained in the patches within the Solaris 10 05/08 Patch Bundle have been intensely tested as a unit through the testing performed on the Solaris 10 05/08 (Update 5) release image.  Additional testing of the Solaris 10 05/08 Patch Bundle has also been performed by the Patch System Test team.  Therefore, the Solaris 10 05/08 Patch Bundle provides a well tested "baseline" option on which to standardize systems.

So while the patch bundle may deliver more change than some other patching strategies, that change has been well tested as a unit and hence may actually reduce the risk of introducing regressions when compared to "dim sum" patching (i.e. choosing an arbitrary combination of patches).  Note that intensive processes are also in place to ensure "dim sum" patching works, and it's rare to encounter a problem caused by "dim sum" patching.

How does the Patch Bundle differ from the Solaris 10 05/08 (Update 5) release image ?

The Solaris 10 05/08 (Update 5) release is a complete Solaris release image.  It contains new packages to support new features in the Solaris 10 05/08 (Update 5) release as well as all Solaris patches which were available when the Update was built.  The patches are pre-applied into the Solaris 10 05/08 release image.  This means that one doesn't have to spend time adding the patches using 'patchadd'.  On the flipside, since the patches are pre-applied into the release image, they cannot be backed out using 'patchrm'.  This isn't generally a problem as the Solaris Update release images are very intensely tested.  One can do a fresh install of the Solaris 10 05/08 (Update 5) release, or upgrade to it from an earlier Solaris release.

The Solaris 10 05/08 Patch Bundle contains the equivalent set of patches to the Solaris 10 05/08 (Update 5) release. The patch bundle does not include the new packages contained in the Solaris 10 05/08 (Update 5) release.  Therefore, new features in Update 5 which depend upon new packages introduced in that release will not be available in the patch bundle.  However, as discussed in a previous blog entry, any change to pre-existing code is delivered in a patch.  This includes features as well as bug fixes.  Therefore some feature enhancements will be available in the patch bundle.  ZFS, for example, is typically self-contained in patches and hence ZFS enhancements will typically be available via the patch bundle as well as via the Update release image. So will most Zones enhancements.  The patch bundle is simply a collection of patches with an install order file (patch_order) and an install script wrapper (installbundle.sh) around 'patchadd'.  Patches in the patch bundle can be backed out using 'patchrm', so long as the '-d' (no save) option wasn't used when applying the patch bundle.

There are a number of "special" or "script" patches included in each Solaris Update release.  These patches are used to correct issues in how patches are pre-applied into the Solaris Update release image and have no purpose whatsoever outside of the Solaris Update release process.  Therefore, these "special" or "script" patches are not released to SunSolve and are not included in the patch bundle.  See the Solaris 10 05/08 Patch Bundle README file for further information on these and other minor differences between the patch set pre-applied in the Solaris 10 05/08 release image and the patch set included in the Solaris 10 05/08 Patch Bundle.

Access 

The Solaris 10 05/08 Patch Bundle is available from the usual patch cluster location. 

Log onto Sunsolve, click on Patches and Updates, then Recommended Patch Clusters and scroll down the box under "Recommended Solaris Patch Clusters, J2SE and Java Enterprise System Clusters" to the Solaris 10 SPARC 05/08 Patch Bundle and Solaris 10 x86 05/08 Patch Bundle entries.  

The cluster is chunked to aid download.  There are 2 chunks for x86 and 3 chunks for SPARC. 

Follow the download instructions to the right of the scroll-down box or read the README file for any chunk.

As with all patch clusters, you need a valid support contract to download the cluster.   The following support contracts include access entitlement to Solaris patches and Patch Clusters (BTW: Software Update = patch), plus a wide range of additional support services:  Solaris Subscriptions, which includes Basic, Standard, Premium, and Solaris Everywhere Service Plans (compare here); Sun Software Service Plans, including Basic, Standard, Premium, and Premium Plus; Sun System Service Plans for Solaris, which includes Bronze, Silver, Gold, or Platinum options (compare here); or a Sun Spectrum Enterprise Service Plan.  See also http://www.sun.com/servicelist/ for country specific details.

Installation

Read the Patch Bundle README file for full installation instructions.

The patch bundle can be installed either on the active boot environment (i.e. the live system) or an inactive boot environment. 

Patching an inactive boot environment is recommended as, depending on the starting patch level of the target system, it may involve less system downtime as only a single reboot is required at the end to activate the boot environment. 

If you patch the active boot environment (i.e. the live system), then depending on the starting patch level of the target system, you may need to reboot an x86 system up to three times (twice at specific points during the installation process and once at the end) and a SPARC system up to two times (once after installing Kernel patch 118833-36 and once at the end).  See the patch bundle README for details.

The Solaris 10 05/08 Patch Bundle includes a new install script, installbundle.sh, which guides users through the installation process. 

The patches are ordered in such a way as to process any reboots required when patching an active boot environment as near the start of the installation process as possible.  This is to facilitate System Administrators by allowing them to get over the interim reboots early in the process and kick off the final patching sequence and let the process complete. 

The screen output and logfiles produced are also designed to be as clear and self-explanatory as possible, providing both overview and drill-down capabilities.

Approximate Installation Time 

How long it will take to install the Solaris 10 05/08 Patch Bundle will depend upon a number of factors:

• The speed of the hardware and its I/O.
  

• Which Solaris 10 release is installed on the target system and what patch level the system is at.  The higher the Solaris 10 Update release or patch level, the quicker the patch bundle will apply.

• Whether Zones are installed on the system and which type of Zone.  Currently, the time to apply the cluster to each whole root non-global Zone will be approximately linear - i.e. multiple the install time by the number of whole root non-global Zones on the system.  Sparse root non-global Zones will be a little faster. (BTW: Sparse root non-global Zones is the recommended option when creating non-global Zones.)  As mentioned in a previous blog posting, there is a project in development to improve Zones patching performance.
  

For example, I installed the Solaris 10 x86 05/08 Patch Bundle on a v65x running the original Solaris 10 3/05 "FCS" (First Customer Shipment) release with no additional patch applied (worst case) and no non-global Zones.  I applied the patch bundle to the active boot environment.  Installation took a total of 3 hours and 58 minutes plus 3 reboots (see the Patch Bundle README for an explanation of the reboots when patching an active boot environment).

Conclusion

The Solaris 10 05/08 Patch Bundle will not suit everyone.  It is a large collection of patches and hence is slow to download and install.

As described in a previous blog posting, the Sun Alert patch clusters (available from the same location on SunSolve - see above) provide the minimum amount of change to address the most critical Solaris issues.  The Sun Alert cluster contains all available Solaris patch fixes for Security, Data Corruption, and System Availability issues. New versions of the Sun Alert cluster are posted whenever a new patch to fix a Sun Alert issue becomes available.  Customers should try to keep as current as possible with the contents of the Sun Alert clusters.

For customers who want to bring all their systems to the Solaris 10 05/08 (Update 5) release patch level, installing or upgrading to the Solaris 10 05/08 (Update 5) Release image remains the recommended option where feasible.  The Solaris 10 05/08 Patch Bundle was simply created in response to a demand from customers for an alternative option where upgrading was not feasible due to internal customer policies.

Since Solaris Update releases are intensely tested, the patch bundle provides a good quality patch "baseline" on which to standardize systems.

From customer feedback to date, the next Patch Bundle for the equivalent set of patches for Update 6 is likely to also be a complete set of patches from Solaris 10 3/05 "FCS" (First Customer Shipment - i.e. the original Solaris 10 release) and not an incremental bundle just containing the patch set delta between Updates 5 and 6 as I had previously suggested.  Feel free to post a comment with your preference.

Enjoy!

It's important to consider Firmware patches when considering an appropriate patching strategy for your systems.

In this regard, there's a new Firmware patching tab on BigAdmin which you may find useful, http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/patches/firmware/

Firmware issues are notoriously difficult to diagnose, so keeping up to date with firmware patches is a good preventative measure.  Also, firmware patches also occasionally deliver support for new features, such as LDoms (on appropriate hardware).

Due to the nature of what they deliver, firmware 'patches' are not standard patches applicable using patchadd.  Users must follow the install instructions in the patch README.

As mentioned in a previous posting, the practice of patch "rejuvenation" to break out large complex patches (typically Kernel patches) into smaller, simpler components going forward has a side effect of making it difficult to follow the sequence of PatchIDs.  If you have the parent patch (e.g. an old Kernel patch), it's not obvious which child patches supercede the parent (e.g. what's the latest Kernel PatchID) as the parent isn't obsoleted by rejuvenation.  Instead, the children of the rejuvenation each specify a Requirement on the parent patch from which they were rejuvenated.

I've listed the Solaris 10 Kernel PatchID Sequence in a previous posting.  For the sake of completeness, here's the Solaris 8 and Solaris 9 Kernel PatchID Sequences (with the most current PatchID top of the list):

Solaris 8 Kernel PatchID Sequence

SPARC	x86
117350-01 to -xx	117351-01 to -xx
requires	requires
117000-01 to -05	117001-01 to -05
requires	requires
108528-01 to -29	108529-01 to 29

Solaris 9 Kernel PatchID Sequence

 

SPARC	x86
122300-02 to -xx	122301-02 to -xx
requires	requires
118558-01 to -39	118559-01 to -39
requires	requires
117171-01 to -17	117172-17 only
requires	obsoletes
112233-01 to -12	112234-04 to -11