Applying a Patch to an Oracle Solaris System With Zones Installed

You can use the patchadd system utility described in the patchadd(1M) man page to perform the following tasks:

Apply a patch to the global zone only
Apply a patch to the global zone and all non-global zones
Apply a patch to specified non-global zone only

How to Apply a Patch to the Global Zone Only

Note - Oracle Solaris 10 3/05 through Oracle Solaris 10 11/06: If you are patching a package that was added by using the pkgadd command with the -G option, the package must be patched by using the patchadd command with the -G option. This restriction is removed in the Oracle Solaris 8/07 release.

You must be the global administrator in the global zone to perform this procedure.

Become superuser, or assume the Primary Administrator role.
To create the role and assign the role to a user, see Using the Solaris Management Tools With RBAC (Task Map) in System Administration Guide: Basic Administration.
Execute the patchadd command with the -Goption, followed by the patch ID.
```
global# patchadd -G patch_id
```

How to Apply a Patch to the Global Zone and All Non-Global Zones

You must be the global administrator in the global zone to perform this procedure.

Also see Oracle Solaris 10 10/09: Zones Parallel Patching to Reduce Patching Time and Oracle Solaris 10 10/09: How to Patch Non-Global Zones in Parallel.

Become superuser, or assume the Primary Administrator role.
To create the role and assign the role to a user, see Using the Solaris Management Tools With RBAC (Task Map) in System Administration Guide: Basic Administration.
Execute the patchadd command followed by the patch ID.
```
global# patchadd patch_id
```

How to Apply a Patch to a Specified Non-Global Zone Only

To apply a patch to a specified non-global zone only, the SUNW_PKG_ALLZONES package parameter for all packages in the patch set must be set to false.

You must be the zone administrator in the non-global zone to perform this procedure.

Log in to the non-global zone as the zone administrator.
While in the non-global zone, my-zone in this procedure, execute the patchadd command followed by the patch ID.
```
my-zone# patchadd patch_id
```

Oracle Solaris 10 10/09: How to Patch Non-Global Zones in Parallel

Set the number of non-global zones that will be patched in parallel in the patchadd configuration file /etc/patch/pdo.conf. When patching in the global zone has finished, the number of non-global zones set in num_proc= are patched together.

If running a release prior to Oracle Solaris 10 10/09, download patch 119254-66 or later revision (SPARC) or 119255-66 or later revision (x86).

You must be the global administrator in the global zone to perform this procedure.

Become superuser, or assume the Primary Administrator role.
To create the role and assign the role to a user, see Using the Solaris Management Tools With RBAC (Task Map) in System Administration Guide: Basic Administration.
(Optional, for releases prior to Oracle Solaris 10 10/09 only) Download patch 119254-66 (SPARC) or 119255-66 (x86).
In the /etc/patch/pdo.conf file, set 6 non-global zones to be patched together in parallel on a system with 4 online CPUs.
```
num_proc=6
```
If there are more than six non-global zones on the system, the first six will be patched in parallel, then the remaining non-global zones will be patched as processes finish patching the first six non-global zones.

Skip Navigation Links
Exit Print View
	System Administration Guide: Oracle Solaris Containers-Resource Management and Oracle Solaris Zones Oracle Solaris 10 1/13 Information Library