SUMMARY: Maintenance Update CD

Thanks to the following people:

Greg Ulyatt
Rick Francis
Stephen Potter
Christopher Dupre
John Malick
Tim Evans
Jeff Pitts

Most said the Maintenance Update CD is only useful for updating to the most
recent release of the OS (e.g. from Solaris 8 10/00 to Solaris 8 04/01).
Since I will be installing the most recent release, applying the latest
recommended patches should be more than efficient.  Thanks again, the
responses are below and the original question is at the bottom.

PJ
-------------------------------------------

MU's have nearly up to date pathces "or fixes".  You should install it.
Then go to sunsolve.sun.com to get the latest recommended patches.

Jeff
-------------------------------------------

MU's bring a prior installation up to the same patchlevels as the
distribution.  Thus, MU4 will bring a prior 2.8 release up to the 4/01
release level.

HOWEVER: Any new functionality that is in the 4/01 level that was not
present before will *NOT* be added via the MU; a new or upgrade install is
required for that.

This question is asked frequently on this mailing list.  Please read all
messages that are posted, and check the archives before posting.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If you are installing Solaris 8 the installation will already include
everything
that is on the MU CD. There is no need to install the MU CD after
installing
Solaris 8. The MU CD would be used if you had installed a previous version
of
Solaris 8, i.e. 1/01, and wanted to bring it up to date as per Sun
recommended
patch clusters, etc.

Essentially, the MU CD is a collection of patches that have been tested
together
for an extremely reliable setup.
--------------------------------------------

Hi,
the MU CD provided with Solaris 8 4/01 is used to upgrade previous
releases of Solaris 8 to the patchlevel / feature level of the 4/01
release. Applying it is easier than to re-install the OS.
--------------------------------------------

The MU should contain all patches released since 8 was released.  You
definitely want to install the recommended patch cluster and any special
patches on any box you have.  Although, you can get the most up-to-date
recommended cluster from sunsolve.sun.com.  The one on the MU will be
several months out of date.

-spp
--
Stephen P Potter                          spp@spotter.yi.org
"You can't just magically invoke Larry and expect that to prove your point.
Or prove that you have a point."   -Simon Cozens
UNIX, Perl, PHP, Web Consulting and Training  http://www.unixlabs.net/~spp/
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

get the latest recommendation cluster instead.
rf
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hi,

MU's are simply a nice way of getting new features from new hardware
releases without a complete re-install. For example, if you got Solaris
8
HW 10/00, and you just got Solaris 8 HW 04/01 the MU will update your
10/00 systems to 04/01 (but since the new one is 04/01, no need to
update).
Sun has a nice area that compares the HW releases and what's different
in them.

http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/fcc/

The differences are normally subtle, but can hurt you if you're not
careful.
For example, try to boot a Ultra 5 with an old HW version of 2.6: it
won't
work since the support had not been added. However, newer HW releases of
2.6
will support the Ultra 5. As well, sometimes new software is added, like
projects in Sol8 (which came out with HW 10/00 and not the 04/00
release,
but running the MU on 04/00 would make it 10/00 as well.)

I hope I've described this well, it's a weird topic (not unlike the 100
versions of Win9x)


--
Greg Ulyatt
REDNET Ltd.
UNIX Systems Administrator
High Wycombe, Bucks, UK
--------------------------------------------

Original question:

Admins,

This upcoming weekend we are going to install Solaris 8 on to one of our
production servers.  In doing the prep work, I noticed SUN has included the
maintenance update CD with version 4/01 of Solaris 8.  Since I do not know
anything about MUs, I was curious if they included it because it has useful
material on it.  This is an offsite server, and one of the few times I will
be out there so this is my chance to do as much maintenance as I can.
Thanks,

PJ