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.