SUMMARY: Solaris Patching

So, a bunch of people reported annoyances uses patchpro... I'll
summarize the different answers.
 I havn't tried any of these yet... 

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THanks Dan for the comprehensive reply!:

I Use patchpro, but only on workstions, not on servers.
Use the pprosetup command to set parameters (pprosetup -h, will list the
options)

To run it manually and install the patches, run "smaptch update --"
You need to set the install policy with pprosetup or you can just edit
the patchpro.conf file.
And example would be "pprosetup -i  interactive:singleuser:standard"
Pprosetup -h will list all the options available.

BTW, the patchpro.conf file in use is not the one listed in the manual,
IT DOES NOT USE /opt/SUNWppro/etc/patchpro.conf, this file is there but
it's not used. The correct file to edit is:
/etc/opt/SUNWppro/etc/patchpro.conf

I had an ultra10 with Sol9 12/03 that patchpro wouldn't install any
patches until I applied the latest cluster manually, now works fine.



---------------------------------------------------
I tried SRSnetconnect 
from Sun, a free tool, which analyzes your system. Also a detailed patch
report 
is given, as it can check real-time the current patchlevel of the
machine 
against SUN's patch database. 
It monitors your system, and you can generate all 
kinds of reports (trends, performance) You can download it for free if
you have 
a support contract.
---------------------------------------------------
Patch pro is pretty good.

use /opt/SUNWppro/bin/pprosetup -i
standard:singleuser:rebootafter:reconfigafter
to set policy

use to update:

/usr/sadm/bin//smpatch update
/opt/SUNWppro/bin/pprosvc -i

use to analize:
/opt/SUNWppro/bin/pprosvc -l

use to donwload
/opt/SUNWppro/bin/pprosvc -d

to get sunsolve patches
#pprosetup -u sunsolve-user-name
Specify your SunSolve password by adding the password to the
/opt/SUNWppro/lib/.sunsolvepw file.
# echo sunsolve-user-passwd > /opt/SUNWppro/lib/.sunsolvepw

you can also schedule it.
I am sure there are better ways, this is a 10 min one

---------------------------------------------------
Someone mentioned that they just download the patch clusters and install
them. They use patchdiag for revision control....

---------------------------------------------------
Directly calling pprosvc:
pprosvc -c force -i
where "force" is a config file w/name and password, etc...
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Patchpro (w/GUI)
---------------------------------------------------
On person mentioned that SUN is coming out with a new patch program
called cst. It should automate everything, but I didn't see a website
for it...I'll keep looking.
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i use sun's patchk [current ver 1.2 afaik] to report outstanding
patches.
i have a cron job fetch the latest patchdb and run it, once a month.
i run a script by hand to parse its output and fetch new patches.
i then patch by hand.
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http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/features/articles/live_upgrade.html
But...This needs a browser open on my server, right? 
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