topic Re: Old patch upgrade files in Operating System - HP-UX

Old patch upgrade files

Jamie McColl — Wed, 05 Dec 2001 14:38:12 GMT

Hello,
I need to recover some much needed space. Am I right in saying that I can get rid of /var/adm/sw/save/PH* as these are just old patch upgrade files. Thank you my fellow Unix gurus!

Re: Old patch upgrade files

Ian Dennison_1 — Wed, 05 Dec 2001 14:43:27 GMT

Oh no! Do not delete them!

the 'cleanup -c [number]' utility will clean up old saved patch files in an orderly manner.

The number indicates how many versions of the file or patch to keep. Anything older is removed. YOu can preview this with the -p option (advisable).

Share and Enjoy! Ian

Re: Old patch upgrade files

Sridhar Bhaskarla — Wed, 05 Dec 2001 14:45:03 GMT

Hi Jamie,

There is a command called "cleanup" that can be used to clean these files. You are not supposed to delete these files manually. Use cleanup starting with level 5. Do not go beyond 2. This command is available through the patch PHCO_19550. It might be superceded and you may want to check the latest patch.

You can preview the disk space and the patches that are going to be deleted with -p flag.

#cleanup -p -c 5
-Sri

Re: Old patch upgrade files

Uday_S_Ankolekar — Wed, 05 Dec 2001 14:46:09 GMT

Hi,

The following thread might help you.

http://us-support2.external.hp.com/cki/bin/doc.pl/sid=2774c1391c2ccc8bd1/screen=ckiDisplayDocument?docId=200000012602825

http://us-support2.external.hp.com/cki/bin/doc.pl/sid=2774c1391c2ccc8bd1/screen=ckiDisplayDocument?docId=200000043254862

Goodluck,
-USA..

Re: Old patch upgrade files

Craig Rants — Wed, 05 Dec 2001 14:46:50 GMT

If you are concerned about saving space in the future you would want to apply your patches with the NO SAVE option. However, you cannot backout of a patch using that option.

I would not remove the files in the /var/adm/sw/save dir until you have exhausted all other means of reclaiming space in /var. Are you able increase the size of /var? Do you have some large log files that can be compressed or archived? Explore those options first would be my recommendation.

Good Luck,
C

Re: Old patch upgrade files

A. Clay Stephenson — Wed, 05 Dec 2001 14:48:06 GMT

No, No, No! You will corrupt your installed software database.

Use the cleanup command instead. If you are running 10.20, simply run cleanup. If you are running 11x, run cleanup -c 1 to leave 1 version. If you are running 11.11 (11i), you will need to install PHCO_24630 to get the cleanup utility.

Clay

Re: Old patch upgrade files

Santosh Nair_1 — Wed, 05 Dec 2001 14:49:23 GMT

Don't just rm the files under /var/adm/sw/save/PH*. Instead commit the patches. Better yet, use the cleanup command to commit all the patches on the system. This should free up quite a bit of space on /var.

As an aside, I would also recommend that you move /var/adm/sw to its own filesystem so that you don't run into as many problems when trying to install products/patches.
-Santosh

Re: Old patch upgrade files

Darrell Allen — Wed, 05 Dec 2001 15:10:17 GMT

Hi Jamie,

The files in /var/adm/sw/save are previous versions that were superseeded by patches. You can uninstall (swremove) the superseeding patches if they are not committed. But that will only work if you have retained the previous versions. Hence the need to not remove /var/adm/sw/save files manually.

Since patches can be superseeded and then those can be superseeded, etc, the cleanup facility gives you the option of specifying how many layers of patches you want to maintain with the -c option. Basically, that says to only commit patches (and remove the "save" files) if the patch has been superseeded the number of times specified with the -c option. I always leave patches applied (not committed) until they have been superseeded at least once and twice is better (in my opinion). Sometimes HP will recall (or issue a warning) about a patch that has been available for some time. I received notification of one just last week where the patch was issued early this year. It had not been superseeded so if I had committed it, I'd be stuck with it (or go thru great pains to remove it - as in rebuild).

Darrell