Correct technique for installing SupportPlus bundles

[Tim Medford]

I've downloaded the Sept 2005 support plus bundle for HPUX 11.11. I run swinstall with no args and then select the downloaded .depot file.

Under the Actions menu in swinstall if I choose "Manage Patch Selection" and go through the install analysis it ends up reporting "105 or 124 ready" to install.

If instead I manually select all 4 bundles within the depot (hwenable, goldapps, goldbase, bundle) and then choose "Match what the target has" and do the install analysis it reports "102 of 445 ready"??

I'm not an swinstall expert...I don't really understand the difference between these 2 ways of managing patches. Why would there be a few more patches in the first technique?

Is there a preferred way to identify the patches that need to be installed?

Thanks in advance.

[Steven E. Protter · Accepted solution]

Shalom Tim,

There are several correct ways to install the bundles.

My preferred method after an Ignite make_tape_recovery backup is to do this:

swinstall -x autoreboot=true -x reinstall=false -s \*

Your selection method gets different totals because there may be duplicate patches in two of the bundles, since they are meant to be installed independently if need be. Or it could simply be a calculation error in swinstall.

Either way, it probably makes no difference, either install method is going to get you within three patches of the the other.

My method prevents accidental reinstall of LITS patches which are next to impossible to back out after reinstall.

SEP

[Tim Medford]

Thanks Steven.

Do I need to issue that command separately for each bundle (ie. goldbase, goldapps, etc...) or is that a 1 time only for the whole depot?

If separate, does the order matter?

Thanks again,
Tim

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi Tim:

It is quite normal to see only some fraction of patches pass the analysis phase and be offered for installation. If you use 'swinstall' correctly you are only selecting patches that are applicable to your system. Further, patches that have previously been applied, will not be selected for installatino again, unless you specifically trigger their reinstallation.

For 11.11, the packaging of the GOLDAPPS and GOLDBASE has recently changed. The contents of *both* bundles are the same and are now known as "GOLDQPK11i. Since 'swinstall' will not attempt to install the same patch twice (unless you force it to do so), the equality of these two bundles will reduce the overall count of applicable patches too.

Chosing "Match what the target has" applies to software other than patches and/or was a pre 11.x mode of patching. For patch installation, always use '-x patch_match_target=true'. The name of the option is self-explanatory. For a good understanding of the overall patching process, see here:

http://www.docs.hp.com/en/5991-4825/5991-4825.pdf

Regards!

...JRF...

[Tim Medford]

Thanks for the info.

I guess the thing I like about using the GUI is I can see the results of the disk usage before/after the patches are installed. Sometimes I might increase a filesystem or two before applying the patches.

What happens if I run the swinstall in this manner and the install analysis fails on disk space?

I guess I can still use the GUI and let it go through the analysis phase....then just cancel before it begins the installation.

Thanks

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi (again) Tim:

Whether or not you use the GUI or commandline interface to 'swinstall', the default action is *not* to allow the execution phase if the disk space analysis fails during the analysis phase. This is governed by the option '-x enforce_dsa=true' which is set to true by default.

See the 'swinstall(1M)' manpages for more information.

Regards!

...JRF...