topic Re: HP Software Assistant (SWA) process in Operating System - HP-UX

HP Software Assistant (SWA) process

Donald Thaler — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 14:06:36 GMT

I have this scenario, two hpux 11.23 servers , one production (apollo), the other test (artemis)
I ran the swa and all the way thru the swinstall process on the test server (artemis) without a problem. (swinstall -s /u04/swadepot/swadepot and i previously updated the swa.conf file swcache=/u04/swadepot)

I ran the same process on the production server,but not the swinstall yet.

I find that there is no .depot file on the test server, and all the patches are in the path /u04/swadepot/swadepot... ?

On the production server a .depot file was created in /u04/swadepot/patch_bundles/hp-ux/QUALITYPACK/QPK1123_B.11.23.0912.082.depot and all the patches are in /u04/swadepot..

My question is (1)why isn't there a .depot file on the test server, would the swinstall have run if it didn't find a .depot in the /u04/swadepot/swadepot directory. (2)The .depot file isn't automatically deleted after a swinstall ? (3)Would a "swa cleanup -c 2" command have removed the .depot file. I mention this because in my notes i have noted that command, and since it's a test server i wouldn't have been concerned with attempting to re-appply any patches that the cleanup process might have deleted?

(4) When i finally run the swinstall on apollo
should it look like:swinstall -s /u04/swadepot/patch_bundles/hp-ux/QUALITYPACK/
QPK1123_B.11.23.0912.082.depot

Re: HP Software Assistant (SWA) process

Steven E. Protter — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 14:16:14 GMT

Shalom,

PSB

(1)why isn't there a .depot file on the test server, would the swinstall have run if it didn't find a .depot in the /u04/swadepot/swadepot directory.

The swa create process failed. There should be logs as to exactly what happened.

(2)The .depot file isn't automatically deleted after a swinstall ? (3)Would a "swa cleanup -c 2" command have removed the .depot file.

What if you want to use the same depots on multiple system. Auto delete of the .depot file would make me a little annoyed with 50 odd HP-UX hosts to update off a single swa configuration (all our servers are the same, we don't need to run swa 50 times). This is probably a configurable option.

(3)Would a "swa cleanup -c 2" command have removed the .depot file.

This is worth testing so long as you don't need the .depot file for another system.

(4) When i finally run the swinstall on apollo
should it look like:swinstall -x autoreboot=true -x reinstall=false -s /u04/swadepot/patch_bundles/hp-ux/QUALITYPACK/
QPK1123_B.11.23.0912.082.depot \*

You need that \* to avoid going into interactive mode, unless you want to.

The two -x commands permit auto reboot and damaging reinstall of software you don't want to reinstall.

SEP

Re: HP Software Assistant (SWA) process

Bob E Campbell — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 22:38:23 GMT

SWA does not create a serial depot (.depot file), but it does download them. The SWA process is:

1. Run a report with your favorite analyzers:

# swa report

2. Review report

Look over the data, preferrably in the HTML report. You may decide to ignore some issues using ~/.swa/ignore and reanalyze. Many SEC issues will not be fixed by a patch.

3. Create a depot

# swa get -t /var/tmp/myDepot

This will run in 2 phases. The first will download serial depots of patches and QPK bundles to the software cache. After this they will be copied into the specified depot.

4. Review ODeps and SII

Some patches have "soft" dependencies documented in the Other Dependencies section. Others may require special handling during installation listed in Special Installation Instructions. SWA will summarize this content for the depot in a readBeforeInstall.txt file at the depot root.

5. Install

# swinstall -s /var/tmp/myDepot -x patch_match_target=true

Note that the system being analyzed and the location of the depot in step #5 can be other systems on the network.