I'm not sure if this is an error or not but I can at least describe the situation.
On a site where a Sun server was recently placed under contract and it is quite old and had been left unserviced for years. Such is the nature of Solaris, it just keeps running. :-) In any case the kernel rev on this machine was 118822-25 and pca says there have been a few revs since then : # grep -i kern patch_report 118833 -- < 36 RS- 999 SunOS 5.10: kernel patch 120011 -- < 14 RS- 999 SunOS 5.10: kernel patch 127127 -- < 11 RS- 901 SunOS 5.10: kernel patch 137137 -- < 09 RS- 702 SunOS 5.10: kernel patch 139555 -- < 08 RS- 524 SunOS 5.10: Kernel Patch 140163 -- < 01 --- 516 SunOS 5.10: /kernel/sys/sparcv9/semsys patch 141444 -- < 09 RS- 365 SunOS 5.10: kernel patch 142909 -- < 17 RS- 36 SunOS 5.10: kernel patch 144488 -- < 01 --- 2 SunOS 5.10: kernel patch I decided I would take a very safe piecewise approach here and apply the patches in order with a reboot for each kernel patch. Slow, but safe. pca says that the first set of patches to aplly up until the first kernel patch were these : Using /root/patchdiag.xref from Oct/12/10 Host: global (SunOS 5.10/Generic_118822-25/sparc/sun4u) List: missing (276/155282) Patch IR CR RSB Age Synopsis ------ -- - -- --- --- ------------------------------------------------------- 119254 28 < 76 RS- 44 SunOS 5.10: Install and Patch Utilities Patch 118367 02 < 04 --- 999 SunOS 5.10: csh Patch 118676 01 < 03 --- 999 SunOS 5.10: patch for Solaris make and sccs utilities 118683 01 < 06 --- 47 SunOS 5.10: Patch for profiling libraries and assembler 118777 03 < 17 RS- 82 SunOS 5.10: Sun GigaSwift Ethernet 1.0 driver patch 118918 09 < 24 RS- 999 SunOS 5.10: Solaris Crypto Framework patch 138217 -- < 01 R-- 695 SunOS 5.10: svccfg & svcprop patch 119578 10 < 30 R-- 999 SunOS 5.10: FMA Patch 118833 -- < 36 RS- 999 SunOS 5.10: kernel patch I applied 119254-76 manually as required. Then I applied the following : # patchadd -M /opt/patch 118367-04 118676-03 118683-06 118777-17 \ > 118918-24 138217-01 119578-30 Then this was followed by : # patchadd -M /opt/patch 118833-36 Validating patches... Loading patches installed on the system... Done! Loading patches requested to install. . . . reboot This worked fine. Then I went looking for the next batch of patches to apply up until a kernel patch was required : 118981 01 < 03 --- 999 SunOS 5.10: Sun Quad FastEthernet qfe driver 119059 09 < 56 RS- 48 X11 6.6.2: Xsun patch 119081 20 < 25 R-- 999 SunOS 5.10: CD-ROM Install Boot Image Patch 119130 14 < 33 R-- 999 SunOS 5.10: Sun Fibre Channel Device Drivers 119213 -- < 25 RS- 2 NSS_NSPR_JSS 3.12.8: NSPR 4.8.6 / NSS 3.12.8 / JSS 4.3.2 124628 -- < 13 RS- 58 SunOS 5.10: CD-ROM Install Boot Image Patch 119252 08 < 30 RS- 58 SunOS 5.10: System Administration Applications Patch 121734 -- < 13 --- 68 SunOS 5.10: patch to support addition of new UTF-8 locales 140860 -- < 02 RS- 7 SunOS 5.10: su patch 140899 -- < 01 R-- 525 SunOS 5.10: [ir].manifest patch 120272 -- < 28 RS- 142 SunOS 5.10: SMA patch 122640 -- < 05 R-- 999 SunOS 5.10: zfs genesis patch 126897 -- < 02 R-- 999 SunOS 5.10: Fault Manager Patch 127755 -- < 01 R-- 902 SunOS 5.10: Fault Manager patch 125503 -- < 02 R-- 999 SunOS 5.10: package-move-of-IP-objects patch 125547 -- < 02 R-- 999 SunOS 5.10: zoneadm indirect dependency patch 140796 -- < 01 R-- 525 SunOS 5.10: umountall patch 120011 -- < 14 RS- 999 SunOS 5.10: kernel patch I then decided to apply all of those patches with the exception of the kernel patch 120011-14 and I saw this : The following requested patches will not be installed because at least one required patch is not installed on this system. 0 For patch 121734-13, required patch 119278-13 does not exist. 0 For patch 121734-13, required patch 124393-03 does not exist. Approved patches will be installed in this order: 118981-03 119059-56 119081-25 119130-33 119213-25 140860-02 140899-01 122640-05 126897-02 125547-02 140796-01 124628-13 120272-28 127755-01 119252-30 125503-02 So a few patch dependecies seemed to be missing. When I eventually tried to apply kernel patch 120011-14 I see this : 0 For patch 120011-14, required patch 125547-01 does not exist. I went looking for 125547-01 and then fell on this : Approved patches will be installed in this order: 125547-02 Checking installed patches... Executing prepatch script... Patch 122660-10 needs to be installed before this patch can be successfully installed on this system. Please install 122660-10 and then run patchadd again for this patch. The prepatch script exited with return code 1. Patchadd is terminating. Thus I needed 122660-10 which reported this : 0 For patch 122660-10, required patch 124204-01 does not exist. I was now down the rabbit hole and I dug out thus : [1] ----------------------------------------------------- Patch 124204-04 has been successfully installed. See /var/sadm/patch/124204-04/log for details Patch packages installed: SUNWfmd SUNWzfskr SUNWzfsr SUNWzfsu [2] ----------------------------------------------------- Patch 122660-10 has been successfully installed. See /var/sadm/patch/122660-10/log for details Patch packages installed: SUNWcsr SUNWcsu SUNWzoneu [3] ----------------------------------------------------- Patch 125547-02 has been successfully installed. See /var/sadm/patch/125547-02/log for details Patch packages installed: SUNWcsr [4] ----------------------------------------------------- finally ... # patchadd 120011-14 Validating patches... Loading patches installed on the system... Done! Loading patches requested to install. . . . Approved patches will be installed in this order: 120011-14 Checking installed patches... Executing prepatch script... Installing patch packages... WARNING: fctl: ULP SunFC FCIP v20070116-1.47 version mismatch; please upgrade SunFC FCIP v20070116-1.47 WARNING: fctl: ULP FCSM version mismatch; please upgrade FCSM Patch 120011-14 has been successfully installed. See /var/run/.patchSafeMode/root/var/sadm/patch/120011-14/log for details Patch packages installed: SUNWatfsu SUNWauda SUNWbtool SUNWcakr SUNWcar SUNWckr SUNWcnetr SUNWcsd SUNWcsl SUNWcslr SUNWcsr SUNWcsu SUNWdoc SUNWdtrc SUNWdtrp SUNWerid SUNWesu SUNWfmd SUNWib SUNWintgige SUNWipfr SUNWipfu SUNWkey SUNWkrbu SUNWkvm SUNWlibsasl SUNWlldap SUNWmdb SUNWmdr SUNWmdu SUNWnfsckr SUNWnfscu SUNWnfssu SUNWnisu SUNWopenssl-libraries SUNWperl584core SUNWperl584usr SUNWpiclu SUNWpool SUNWpoolr SUNWrcmdc SUNWroute SUNWses SUNWsmapi SUNWssad SUNWtavor SUNWtecla SUNWtoo SUNWudapltr SUNWudapltu SUNWwbsup SUNWxcu4 SUNWxge SUNWzfskr SUNWzfsr SUNWzfsu SUNWzoner SUNWzoneu # time for a reboot. Okay, so it looks like a few patch dependecies are missing in the patch order. Is there faulty data in the patchdiag.xref perhaps or simply the patch dependecy data is missing entirely? -- Dennis