How to Update Your System With Patches

An update of a system performs the entire patch management process in one step. First, the analysis determines the appropriate patches for your system. Next, those patches are downloaded to your system. Finally, the patches are applied to your system.

All standard patches are applied by an update. You can configure your system to apply some nonstandard patches by changing the default policy for applying patches. To change the policy for your system, see How to Change the Policy for Applying Patches.

Steps

1. Become an appropriately authorized user or assume a role that includes the Software Installation profile or the solaris.admin.patchmgr.* authorization.

   The System Administrator profile includes the appropriate profiles. To create the role and assign the role to a user, see Configuring RBAC (Task Map) in System Administration Guide: Security Services.

2. Update the system with patches in one of the following ways:

   • To update your system with all appropriate patches, type:

     # smpatch update

   • To update your system with all patches listed in a file, first create a patch list (see How to Analyze Your System to Obtain the List of Patches to Apply), then type:

     # smpatch update -x idlist=patch-list-file

   • To update your system with particular patches, type:

     # smpatch update -i patch-id -i patch-id ...

   If you specify particular patches by using the -i or -x idlist= options, the list is augmented with patches on which they depend before the update occurs.

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   Note

   Any patches that cannot be applied to the system are listed in a patch list file called disallowed_patch_list, which is located in the download directory. You can use this file as input to the smpatch add command.

   For example, you might bring your system to single-user mode and apply the patches listed in the disallowed_patch_list file by typing the following:

   # init S # smpatch add -x idlist=/var/sadm/spool/disallowed_patch_list

   See How to Apply Patches to Your System for more information.

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Example 53 Updating Your System With Patches

The following example shows how to update a system with patch 112622-12 and 112771-17.

# smpatch update -i 112622-12 -i 112771-17

The following example shows how to update a system by using a list of patches, named plist, as input. It then shows how to create a patch list and modify it to contain only the patches that you want to apply to your system. Then, use the smpatch update command to apply the patches and update the system.

1. Create a list of patches by performing an analysis.

2. Edit the patch list to include only patches that you want to apply.

3. Run the smpatch update command to apply the patches.

   For example:

   # smpatch analyze > plist . . . # vi plist . . . # smpatch update -x idlist=plist . . .