Fredrich Maney wrote:
'pca.pl --install patchlist.txt' only tries to install the patches
listed in patchlist.txt, not any of the dependencies of those patches
and also seems to ignore whether the patch is appropriate for the
platform in question, but blindly tries to install every patch in the
patchlist.txt on the system.
That behaviour depends on whether you list only patch IDs or full patch
IDs plus revisions in patchlist.txt. In the first case, dependencies
will be resolved, in the second case they won't. E.g.:
$ pca -l 119059 119254 119313
...
Patch IR CR RSB Age Synopsis
------ -- - -- --- --- ---------------------------------------------
119254 52 < 76 RS- 43 SunOS 5.10: Install and Patch Utilities Patch
119059 40 < 56 RS- 47 X11 6.6.2: Xsun patch
138217 -- < 01 R-- 694 SunOS 5.10: svccfg & svcprop patch
140899 -- < 01 R-- 524 SunOS 5.10: [ir].manifest patch
119313 19 < 38 --- 77 SunOS 5.10: WBEM Patch
$ pca -l 119059-56 119254-76 119313-38
...
Patch IR CR RSB Age Synopsis
------ -- - -- --- --- ---------------------------------------------
119059 40 < 56 RS- 47 X11 6.6.2: Xsun patch
119254 52 < 76 RS- 43 SunOS 5.10: Install and Patch Utilities Patch
119313 19 < 38 --- 77 SunOS 5.10: WBEM Patch
The reason for this difference is that the patchdiag.xref file only
includes information about the most recent revision of a patch, so PCA
can't resolve dependencies for non-current revisions. There's not even a
guarantee that the synopsis is correct, or that a certain revision
exists. The information is only included in the "patchinfo" file in the
patch ZIP file, which PCA can't use.
Theoretically, PCA could check whether all of the specified revisions
are current revisions, and do dependency analysis then. That would be a
rare case, though (and you could just leave off the revisions to get the
same result), so it doesn't make sense.
So PCA's paradigm is: If the user specifies exact patch revisions, it
will assume that the user knows what he does and wants to install those
patches in exactly this order. If there are dependencies, the user will
have to resolve those manually and feed an appropriate list to PCA.
Hope that helps,
Martin.
