On Tue, Mar 9, 2010 at 11:15 PM, Scott A. Severtson <[email protected]> wrote: > Follow-up from the support engineer: > >>> PCA uses patchadd internally to apply patches. Would we be having >>> this discussion if we had used PCA to download the patches, then applied >>> each one manually using patchadd? What if we had written a shell script >>> to loop through the patches, and run patchadd? >>> >>> How would the latter be different than using PCA to apply the patches? >> >> We also do not provide support assistance for any custom scripts which >> apply >> multiple patches; only for the Sun-provided patch cluster installation >> scripts >> and even those are provided mostly as a convenience. Any issues with any >> such tools must be reproduced using manual installation methods to receive >> full support. > > --- SNIP --- > >> The only methods to *repair* the system and return it to a supportable >> configuration are as follows: >> >> 1) reinstall >> 2) upgrade install >> 3) revert to a point before PCA was used and return to the current patch >> levels without it. If the issue persists we can begin developing a fix as >> mentioned above so you can revert once more and then apply the fix. >> >> In order to assist further, we need you to perform one of the above >> actions. >> The issue either will or it will not persist and we can resume the >> investigation >> from that point, if necessary, with renewed confidence in the integrity of >> the >> rest of the system. > > We're going with the "upgrade install" route - don't have the time/energy to > fight this battle while the server is non-functional.
I would still follow up with said engineer's boss to discuss how unhelpful this has been Blaming it on the tool or procedure is a favorite game of support, instead of trying to analyze why it's broke. Also, if you're doing Solaris 10, I can highly recommend ZFS root with live upgrade. There's a few warts, but nothing that would make me want to go back to ufs with vxvm or svm.
