Summary: will patchadd/installpatch check for pre-requisite packages & advise reboot

Thanks to Casper, Jonathan, Reggie, Ed, Bernd & possibly
others that I may have missed.  This list has helped a lot.
 
My questions are preceded by >  & replies are preceded
by -  below.
 
>a)will patchadd/installpatch checks if existing packages
>   is present before it install the patch, eg: check if TIFF
>   package is present in the system before it applies the
>   patch for TIFF (such as patch 114219-11 for Solaris 9)?
>   What about installpatch?
-Yes; installpatch will fail if the software to be patched
 is not installed.
-When installing a patch cluster, it'll only install patches
 for which prequisites are already installed.
-yep
 
>b)will patchadd/installpatch prompt/advise us to reboot
>   the system after patching or we're expected to do
>   this by default for the patch to take effect?
-The readme tells you whether that is necessary or not.
-Maybe, you should always read the patch README before
 applying a patch
-It will advise a reboot, but not force it.(_Typically
 it won't install patches that might be unsafe in multi
 user, if the machine is in multi user mode)
-Yes - This is normally only needed for a kernel patch though.
 

>Lastly, if I were to take a backup prior to applying a
>patch, what backup would you suggest, 
>"ufsdump of the root partition  & /var  partition?
-Whatever partitions you have which contain the total
 of /, /usr, /var and possibly /opt.
-Yes, /, /var and /usr are enough.

 

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