On Wed, 21 Feb 2007, Jens Elkner wrote: > Because I wanna avoid needless downtimes: > When patches are installed and drivers are patched, usually a reboot is > suggested/required via patch metadata. Since the internals of a patch like > what has been done/what influence has it one the system or what impact would > it have on the system, if one doesn't install it are usually not docuented or > at least hard to find or hardly understandable for a none-expert > So the usualy option for a solaris user is, > a) install the patch and reboot or die OR > b) don't install the software, you do not need...
Wouldn't this only come into play if the driver is actually in use? If SUNWCreq installs FC drivers and never uses them, patching those drivers should not affect a running system. However, the odds are that when you apply a patch cluster to a host reboots will be required anyways. I could see an argument against installing a software package if there was a security issue, like a suid executable you don't want, or a service you don't need. But if a driver sits on the host unused, and takes up maybe 200k of disk space is it really worth the effort of removing the driver and documenting your changes against the normal baseline install? -------------------- Christopher Josephes cpj1 at visi.com
