Re: [pca] Oracle removed support from patchdiag.xref for --minimal option in pca?

[Don O'Malley]

Hi Jeff, The --minimal option never mapped to the contents of the CPU. The --minimal option is mapped to the Recommended Patch Cluster contents, not the CPU. The CPU is effectively an archived version of the Recommended Patch Cluster, so the 2 are closely related. That said, with changes that we made to merge the Recommended Patch Cluster and former Sun Alert Cluster (see Patch Corner - Merging the Solaris Recommended and Sun Alert Patch Clusters for the details), we now only add the lowest revision of a patch required to address SunAlert issues (Security, Data Loss and System Availability). This means that over time customers need to apply less patches to keep up to date with critical fixes. This is the reason that some patches in patchdiag.xref that are Recommended are now longer the latest revs of patches. The only exception to this rule is patches required for the patch utilities on Solaris to function correctly; these patches (eg. 119254) are always kept at the latest available revision. HTH, -Don Jeff wrote: I've been using the --minimal option for pca since it came out to standardize patching based on the most recent CPU.  Today I noticed that is looks like Oracle dropped support for in in patchdiag.xref. I'm using the patchdiag.xref I downloaded on May 15th and trying to apply the patches from the April/2011 CPU using pca.  I find these patch discrepancies between what is in the CPU and what is in patchdiag.xref: April CPU    patchdiag                    119254-80    119254-81 122911-24    122911-25 125215-03    125215-04 141552-03    141552-04 143559-07    143559-08 144488-11    144488-14 Previously, patdiag.xref would list both the version of the patch that was in the CPU and the most recent version. Guess the question is to Martin or Don:  Do you know if this is intentional? -- Jeff -- Don O'Malley Manager, Patch System Test Revenue Product Engineering | Solaris | Hardware East Point Business Park, Dublin 3, Ireland Phone: +353 1 8199764 Team Alias: rpe_patch_system_test...@oracle.com