HPUX patching

[Ali Imran Abbas]

I need some guide line for doing patching on hpux servers. We have 10.20, 11.00, 11.11 and 11.23 versions running on different servers.

Can any one guide me the best tool to use for patching avaim or software assistant or some thing like this and what would be the approach and procedure for that. I am doing it for the first time so need more detailed answer.

Regards,

Ali

[Jaime Bolanos Rojas. · Accepted solution]

Ali,

10.20 and 11.00 Systems are out of support, so patching them is a little bit more taskful than the 11.11 and 11.23 systems. For the last two the best way to patch them is by installing the latest bundles for them, you can find them at this link:

http://www12.itrc.hp.com/service/patch/releaseIndexPage.do?BC=main|

For the unsupported OS you will need to know exactly what patch you want and then find it in the ftp site for patches at the www.itrc.hp.com site.

Regards,

Jaime.

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi:

First, of course, 10.20 & 11.0 are out-of-support. That said, this limits your options somewhat.

That is, the SWA (Software Assistant Tool) is only available on 11.11 or later:

https://h20293.www2.hp.com/portal/swdepot/displayProductInfo.do?productNumber=B6834AA

This is my first choice for 11i systems without doubt.

For pre-11i systems, you will need to collect patches and build your software depots for installation in a more hand-rolled manner (using 'swcopy' to collect multiple patches into an installable depot) or, at best, using the Patch Database to download a collection of patches with the attendant 'create_depot_hp-ux*' script.

Regards!

...JRF...

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi (again):

I would add that you should read:

http://www.docs.hp.com/en/5992-0674/5992-0674.pdf

...and for press 11i systems, the patch management documention available from the specific operating system release under the heading "By OS Release" here:

http://docs.hp.com/index.html

Regards!

...JRF...

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

Your best starting point for all versions of HP-UX is to install the most recent bi-annual patch set.

For 10.20 that probably dates back to 2001, for 11.00 that dates to March or May of 2004.

11.11 and 11.23 have bi-annual updates less than six months old.

All of this is available from http://itrc.hp.com

Then you need to see what patches are required by your applications. The Oracle OS patch list for all these OS versions is extensive and not included in the bi-annual patch updates.

The patching tools mentioned above are a great help for current systems.

Lastly, to keep your old systems secure, plan the migration before you hit a killer problem or dead hardware. Don't wait for the train to hit you, plan for it in advance.

SEP

[Ali Imran Abbas]

Out of support means that they are no more releasing patches for these versions? Should I leave them as is. They are working fine and applications on them are running smoothly.

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi:

> Out of support means that they are no more releasing patches for these versions?

Yes, that is correct.

> Should I leave them as is. They are working fine and applications on them are running smoothly.

I would. Instead you should try to migrate these to a current, supported release. Of course, this depends on what application software you are running and how much control you have over it.

Regards!

...JRF...

[Bob E Campbell]

While SWA can only be installed on HP-UX 11.11 (11iv1) and later systems you should be able to analyze and build a depot for remote 11.0 systems.

# swa report -s ssh://user@11.0_box

or

# swa report -s 11.0_box

The "get" major mode builds for the last run report by default. You can use the "-x user_dir=" or "-x analysis_file=" options to preserve system-specific runs.

Of course, once that first depot is built you should not see much in the way of future change.

Bob

(Oh, and this is not where we spend most of our test time lately ;-)