Hello, we have great trouble patching a server with local zones, where local zone's /var is configured as a separate filesystem.
The situation is: -Server running Solaris 10 Update 1 (01/06) -Local zones with /var separated from local zone's root filesystem -While installing patches during single user mode we will get error messages like: "Cannot check name: //var/sadm/...". Patches will be installed partially. Everything is ok if we install patches during multi-user. But this is not an option for many patches! In thread <http://www.opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?threadID=18964> Enda told us that we'd been caught by bug 6438808 and it will be fixed by patch 119254-31 to be available soon. Well. In the meantime we got that patch to get around those "Cannot check name" problems. We are able to patch servers ... running in multi-user (not recommended) or ... in single-user if there are no local zones with separated /var. But we are not able to patch already existing zones with separated /var from within single user, because "patchadd 119254-31" failes with "Patch 119254-31 failed to install due to a failure produced by pkgadd.". Analysis showed that checkinstall is failing with SIGSEGV. We found that patch 121004-03 (sh patch) will fix this. Okay, we've tried to install 121004-03 at first, but 121004-03 fails while patching local zones, because of bug 6438808. That's a problem: we need 121004-03 for installing 119254-31, but we also need 119254-31 for installing 121004-03. There is additional complexity because 119254-31 requires 121133-02 (zones library and zones utility patch) which itself requires 120900-04 (libzonecfg Patch). These patches cannot be installed, too! They are failing to install into local zones with separate /var. Now what? How can we patch our servers? That's what we call in germany "Henne-und-Ei-Problem", a perdicament. I think Sun's recommended and security patch clusters will have the same problem if applied in single user mode on a server with local zones configured, each with separated /var filesystem. Any help highly appreciated, Andreas Koppenh?fer This message posted from opensolaris.org
