Interim Diagnostic or Relief (IDR) updates deliver custom temporary workarounds or diagnostics for specific issues. An IDR is not a patch and is not generally available to all customers. An IDR might provide an interim workaround for the issue until a final fix can be delivered, or an IDR might gather diagnostic data related to the specific issue. Even if the IDR alleviates the problem, you must proceed to a permanent solution as soon as a permanent solution is available. IDRs are not delivered with SRUs, though a permanent fix for the issue might be delivered in a subsequent SRU. See Applying Support Updates for information about SRUs.
IDRs prevent you from updating the system in a way that would remove the IDR if the issue addressed by the IDR is not fixed in the update. For example, if the IDR modifies the system/network package and the SRU updates the system/network package but does not provide a fix to the problem addressed by the IDR, then that update will fail.
If an SRU delivers fixes for the issues that are addressed in an IDR, then that SRU will also include a superseding package for that IDR that automatically removes the IDR during the update. The superseding IDR package enables you to update to the SRU without explicitly removing the IDR.
An IDR is delivered as a package archive file with a p5p extension. A package archive is a file that contains publisher information and one or more packages provided by that publisher.