System Administration Guide: Basic Administration

Managing Patches in the Solaris Environment (Road Map)

Use this map to identify all the tasks for managing patches in the Solaris environment. Each task points to a series of additional tasks such as managing signed or unsigned patches.

Task	Description	For Instructions
Identify disk space requirements for patches	Identify whether your system has enough disk space to download or spool patches.	Identifying Disk Space Requirements for Patches
Determine if adding signed or unsigned patches	Determine whether adding signed or unsigned patches is best for your environment.	Selecting Signed or Unsigned Patches for Your Environment
Add a signed or unsigned patch to your system	You can add signed patches with either of the following commands:
	Use the `patchadd` command in the Solaris 9 12/03 release.	How to Automatically Download and Add a Signed Solaris Patch (`patchadd`)
	Use the `smpatch` command in the Solaris 2.6, 7, 8, or 9 releases.
	`smpatch` command – Prepare your system for this method.	Preparation for Managing Signed Patches with `smpatch` Command (Task Map)
	`smpatch` command – Add signed patches to your system.	Managing Signed Patches With `smpatch` Command (Task Map)
	Add an unsigned patch to your system.	Managing Unsigned Solaris Patches (Task Map)

Identifying Disk Space Requirements for Patches

Keep the following disk space considerations in mind before you begin downloading or spooling patches:

The default download directory for signed patches is /var/sadm/spool. Unsigned patches that are spooled are also stored in /var/sadm/spool.
The patch download process might use more disk space than anticipated because multiple patches can be downloaded, if prerequisite patches are required by the patch that you downloaded.
Signed patches are unpacked in the /var/sadm/spool directory before they are installed. Be sure you have enough disk space in the /var directory for this process.
If your /var directory is not large enough to support the downloading and unpacking of signed patches, you can use the smpatch command with the -d option to specify an alternate patch download directory.
You can safely remove the patches from the /var/sadm/spool directory after they are successfully downloaded and added to your system to reclaim disk space in the /var directory.

Selecting Signed or Unsigned Patches for Your Environment

The key factor in determining when to add signed or unsigned patches is whether or not the secure download of patches is important in your environment. If the secure download of patches is important in your environment, then add signed patches to your system.