I appreciate the answer Martin. In my case I will continue to trust pca's behaviour, however given my horrible past experience with kernel patches I will likely add them to a 'stop after' line in my config file.
Thanks again for your.feedback. Always informative. Fred On 3/23/09, Martin Paul <mar...@par.univie.ac.at> wrote: > Hi Fred, > >> My understanding it is that the logic between patchinfo and what PCA spits >> out works like this: >> >> reconfigimmediate --> "Reconfig required" >> rebootimmediate --> "Reboot required" >> reconfiglater --> "Reconfig recommended" >> rebootlater --> "Reboot Recommended" > > Correct. > >> Correct me if I'm wrong, but when pca comes across a 'reconfig immediate' >> patch, for example *137137-09*, shouldn't it stop dead in it's path and >> prompt the user to reboot before proceeding with further patches? I think >> it >> just keeps on trucking until all the patches in it's list are done, >> doesn't >> it? > > You're right, a patch with *immediate will not make pca stop installing > patches, it will go on. There are three reasons for that behaviour: > > After years of patching like this, I haven't seen a problem with it. Ok, > that's a weak argument, I know :) > > pca uses patchadd to install patches, and assumes its behaviour to be a > kind of base standard. As you might guess, patchadd doesn't refuse to > install further patches (for exceptions, see below), so pca follows this > behaviour. > > The third and strongest reason is this statement by Sun: > > http://blogs.sun.com/patch/entry/definitive_interpretation_of_the_rebootimmediate > > (or see InfoDoc 249046). It says: > > reconfigimmediate: the system is in a potentially inconsistent state > until the system is rebooted ... 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 (e.g. 118833-36/118855-36, whose patch scripts replace > 'patchadd' with a no-op telling the user to reboot the system). > > All this convinced me that pca's behaviour is OK, especially as you > probably would need more than one reboot during a regular patch session, > slowing down things a lot. > > For 100% safety, I guess Sun's (and my) answer would be to use Live > Update to install patches in an inactive boot environment. > > Martin. > > -- Fred Chagnon fchag...@gmail.com
