ESM and Patch Updates

[Greg Stark_1]

Not sure if this is the right forum, but, is anyone using ESM? I have recently been chosen to monitor all our HP-UX servers and ensure that each server is on the current patch level based on ESM's recommendations.

I ran ESM against a 11.00 server that is on the March 2002 GR patch. It returned a rather large list of patches that should be installed. As I started researching the list, I noticed that most were old, some almost 3 years, and that the 11.00 box actually had many of the patches that superceded the ones ESM was asking for.

It appears that ESM recommends patches based on those listed in a patch template file that is updated quarterly via some "live update" mechanism. After calling Symantec, the tech explained that although this file may be part of the "live update", it may also be out of date and need a lot of manual changes in order to allow ESM to query for all of the current patches.

This seems to nullify all the advantages of the "live update" function. Can anyone shed some light on this? Or, tell me how they are using ESM for patch updates in HP-UX? I have searched Symantec's website and found very little and the tech I spoke with didn't exactly give me a "warm fuzzy".

Thanks again in advance,
Greg