Accessing the Sun Patch Manager Command-Line Interface

Do not run simultaneous Patch Manager operations on your system because it might become unstable. Do not interrupt a patch operation once it has started. If a patch operation is running, you must wait for that operation to complete before starting another operation.

This behavior pertains to operations initiated by both the smpatch command and by the browser interface.

You can run either the local mode or remote mode smpatch command as a user with the appropriate authorizations, such as superuser, or by assuming a role that includes the appropriate profiles.

A user must have the solaris.admin.patchmgr.* authorization to run the smpatch command.

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.

The pprosetup and pprosvc commands are included with Sun Patch Manager 2.0 for transition purposes. It is best not to use these commands and to use the smpatch command instead.

For more information about smpatch command-line options, see the smpatch(1M) man page.

How to Access the Sun Patch Manager Command-Line Interface (Command Line)

By default, the smpatch command runs in local mode.

1. Decide whether to manage patches on the local system or on a remote system.

   • If you want to manage patches on the local system only, go to Step 2.

   • If you want to manage patches on a remote system, go to Step 4.

     The Solaris WBEM services must be running on the remote system.

2. Log in to a system as a user with appropriate authorizations or assume a role with the appropriate authorizations.

   Note that you must be an appropriately authorized user to assume an appropriate role. See Configuring RBAC (Task Map) in System Administration Guide: Security Services.

3. Run the smpatch command you want.

   For example:

   $ smpatch analyze

4. Log in to a system as a user who is appropriately authorized or is permitted to assume a role that is appropriately authorized.

5. Run the smpatch command with the -n option to specify the name of the system on which to operate.

   For example:

   $ smpatch analyze -n system-name

   To perform the operation with an assumed role, type:

   $ smpatch analyze -r role-name -n system-name

Example 5–1 Accessing the Sun Patch Manager Command-Line Interface

The following examples use the smpatch get command, which lists the configuration settings for your patch management environment.

This example shows how to run the smpatch command on the local system.

# smpatch get

This example shows how an authorized user can run the smpatch command on the remote system called jupiter.

# smpatch get -n jupiter

This example shows how you can run the smpatch command on the remote system called jupiter as the role patcher.

# smpatch get -r patcher -n jupiter

What to Do Next

You can use the smpatch command to configure the patch management environment for your system and manage patches. See the following:

• Configuring Your Patch Management Environment by Using the Command-Line Interface (Task Map)

• Managing Patches by Using the Command-Line Interface (Task Map)

• Tuning Your Patch Management Environment by Using the Command-Line Interface (Task Map)