Removing Patches From Your System

You might want to remove (or back out) a patch that you previously applied to your system. Patch Manager enables you to remove patches.

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

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

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

• The patch has been obsoleted by a later patch.

• The patch is required by another patch.

The Solaris patch tools call the pkgadd command to restore packages that were saved when the patch was initially applied.

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

If you attempt to remove a patch on which other patches depend, it is not removed. If you remove all of the patches that depend upon this patch, then you can remove it.