SUMMARY: MU's and Patches

Thanks to David Foster, Jon Andrews, John Douglass, Adam Kirby, and Bill Voight.

I have interwoven your comments among my numbered questions:


1.  The CD wallet with all of the Solaris CD's has a disk labelled "Maintenance Update 2.   Do I need to install the items on this CD?


"The MU's contain Solaris updates and enhancements that are not a requirement but are sometimes handy. They update your solaris system to the lastest available version (eg 10/01)."


2.  I can get a current MU from the Sun website, will that augment or replace the CD MU I have?  IOW, can I just get the website MU and install that instead of the CD version?

"The MU on the cd is for people with earlier versions of Solaris to update to the version you're on.

e.g. Solaris 8 has several hardware updates including:

01/01
04/01
10/01 (is the most recent)

If you were on 01/01 you could update to 10/01 with the MU cd. You can't update between major releases of Solaris with an MU, just update your minor hardware release.

Yep, the one off the web site will usually be the latest available. They are cumulative (I believe). Usually sun, whilst working on the next version of Solaris (5.9 at the moment) roll back some of the features/updates into the current release.   " 

3.  Or, do you suggest just downloading Patch clusters and installing them?

"I'd just apply the patch cluster, it will be much more current. Be sure to read the README files for all patches, some have gotchas in the "Special Installation Instructions" section.

MUs include not only patches to that point but also new features/packages that may have been added to the later release of the OS.

The idea would be that MU6 (the most recent) would bring an older Solaris 8 installation to the point of being the same as Solaris 8 10/01.

If you are not looking for any of the newer functionality that a newer Solaris release might have, then the patch cluster is fine.

Yes, it's a great idea.  

Different things. Patch clusters contain patches for system/security etc.. fixes and it is essential that you keep up to date with them. They are unrelated to the MU's. You don't need to apply the MU's if you don't want. It's a case of if you are happy with what you've got and don't need extra functionality than don't apply them."


4.  Lastly, how often do MU's come out, normally?  Are they cumulative?

"Patches are added to the clusters, or patches are updated (the -xx part of patch-id, like 132078-xx is incremented) fairly often. I usually install the clusters about every 4 months. Patches which have already been installed are skipped.

Assuming that you have a support contract you should download the patch cluster from the sunsolve web site.

Then apply any product patches.

Always read the patch readme's in my experience. ;)

Patches are impossible to keep up with ;) and the clusters are cumulative.

Quarterly in January, April, July, and October.  AFAIK they are cumulative."




Richard
-------------------------------- 
Richard R. Morgan 
Systems Engineer 
Winstar - OSS SCM Group
Woodland Park, Herndon, VA 
tel:703-889-1047 
(mailto:rrmorgan@winstar.com)  
   


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