Update Management Process

Update Manager enables you to perform the update management process, which includes the following tasks:

• Analyzing the system to obtain a list of appropriate updates

• Downloading the appropriate updates to your system

• Applying the appropriate updates to your system

• Configuring the update management environment for your system

• Tuning the update management environment for your system

• Removing updates from your system

• Using the Sun Update Connection Hosted web application to remotely manage your systems

For information about recommended strategies and practices for using Solaris updates, see Solaris Patch Management Recommended Strategies at http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/coll/1078.1.

After an update has been successfully applied, the downloaded update is removed from the download directory.

Updates are applied to your system depending on the specified policy and the update properties that are associated with the downloaded updates.

If an update does not meet the policy for applying updates, the update is not applied immediately. Instead, the update is applied during a scheduled system shutdown. The Update Manager application shows these updates as being Restart Required updates.

For any of the updates that have the interactive property set, follow the instructions in the update’s README file to manually apply them. The Update Manager application shows these updates as being Download Only updates.

Analyzing Your System

Before you apply updates to your system, you must determine which updates are needed. You can use Update Manager to perform a update analysis of your system to obtain a list of appropriate updates.

Update Manager uses analysis modules and a list of available updates to perform the analysis of your Solaris system. For information about the source of updates, see Specifying the Source of Updates.

Based on the result of the analysis, the updates can be downloaded and applied to your system.

Sometimes an update cannot be applied to the system until another update is applied. The first update is said to depend on the second update. When Update Manager analyzes your system, it checks for update dependencies and automatically includes all updates in the resulting list.

The list of updates that is generated by the analysis is based on all of the available updates from the Sun update server. No explicit information about your host system or its network configuration is transmitted to Sun. Only a request for the Sun update set is transmitted. The update set is scanned for updates that are appropriate for this host system, the results are displayed, and those updates are optionally downloaded.

Downloading Updates to Your System

Before you apply updates to your system, you must download the updates that you want from the Sun update server to that system.

You can download updates from the Sun update server based on an analysis of the system, or you can specify particular updates to download.

The Update Manager application ties the download operation and the installation operation together. So, when you request that an update be installed, the update is first downloaded to your system and then installed.

Some updates, which are marked as Download Only, cannot be installed by the Update Manager application. When you request that a Download Only update be installed, the update is downloaded to your system, but not installed. To install the update, you must follow the installation instructions in the update’s README file.

Applying Updates to Your System

Update Manager can apply updates to your system.

If you use the smpatch add command to apply particular updates, it attempts to apply only those updates that you specified. The smpatch add command does not attempt to resolve update dependencies. If you want to apply an update that has a missing dependency, the update is not applied. You can use the smpatch analyze command or the smpatch update command to resolve update dependencies.

When you use the Update Manager GUI to apply updates that you selected from the list of updates, each update is downloaded (if necessary) before it is applied.

If you attempt to install a list of updates, Update Manager first performs an analysis to determine whether dependent updates must also be installed.

Removing Updates From Your System

You might want to remove (or back out) an update that you previously applied to your system. Update Manager enables you to remove updates.

Do not remove the Update Manager feature update from a system, or Update Manager will not work properly.

When you remove an update, the Solaris update tools restore all of the files that have been modified by that update, unless any of the following are true:

• The update was applied by using the patchadd -d command, which instructs patchadd not to save copies of files being updated or replaced.

• The update was applied by using the patchadd command without the -d option, and the backout files that were generated have since been removed.

• The update has been made obsolete by a later update.

• The update is required by another update.

During the update removal process, the patchrm command logs the backout process in the /tmp/backoutlog.process-id file. This log file is automatically removed if the update is successfully removed.

You can use the Update Manager GUI to remove one or more updates by selecting them from the list of applied updates. However, you can only remove one update at a time with the smpatch remove command.

If you attempt to remove an update on which other updates depend, it is not removed. If you remove all of the updates that depend upon this update, you can remove the update.

When you attempt to remove an update on which other updates depend, Update Manager presents you with the list of updates that must be removed as well. To remove the update you originally selected, you must agree to remove these updates.

Using the Sun Update Connection Hosted Web Application to Manage Your Systems

You can request that your Solaris 10 systems be managed by the Sun Update Connection Hosted web application either during or after the registration process. This Hosted web application enables you to manage the updates on all of your systems. For more information, see Chapter 5, Managing Solaris Updates by Using the Sun Update Connection Hosted Browser Interface.

Even if your system is managed by the Sun Update Connection Hosted web application, you can still use Update Manager to manage updates on your local system.