SUMMARY: installed patches disappeared

Hello managers,

i've asked earlier this day:
>only 2 weeks ago i've installed solaris-7 from scratch on my 2 ultra60.
>After initial installation, i've installed the big patchcontainer MU4
>and "over" that the most recent Recommended and Security patches.
>I have the logs where i can see which patches have been installed.
>
>Today i've tried "showrev -p" and see that there are NO patches installed.
>
>I looked and can't find any intrusion hints.
>And i'm the only one knowing the root-password...
>
>Any ideas what may have gone wrong?

and with the valuable help of "Richard Smith" <richard.c.smith@gte.net>
could find the problem (and hope to fix it soon)!

First: my installed patches dit NOT disappear!
They "only" disappear for "showrev -p", because i managed
to "loose somehow" my /var/sadm/patch/.patchDB file, which is
the database for all patch-utilities including "showrev -p" and "patchk".

And i have an idea how i lost that .patchDB file.
When installing the patches, the utility checks for enough free space.
This check failed for MU4 (but in fact it would have been more than enough!)
and so i copied "/var/sadm" over to "/tmp/var/sadm", installed the
patches and then copied everything back. Obviously i lost that dot-file
somewhere then... :( but none of my patches :) !!!

In the meantime i could check on another machine, that this .patchDB
file is pure ascii text - and now i'm trying to make an edited copy
to fit the needs of my ultra 60's...

With regards,

Bernt Christandl