When used in a non-global zone by the zone administrator, patchadd can only be used to add patches to that zone. A patch can be added to a non-global zone in the following cases:
The patch does not affect any area of the zone that is shared from the global zone.
All packages in the patch are set SUNW_PKG_ALLZONES=false.
The following steps are performed by the patchadd utility:
The patch is added to the zone.
The patch database on the zone is updated.