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Old patch upgrade files

 
Jamie McColl
Occasional Advisor

Old patch upgrade files

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!
Be selective, be objective, be an asset to the collective
7 REPLIES 7
Ian Dennison_1
Honored Contributor

Re: Old patch upgrade files

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
Building a dumber user
Sridhar Bhaskarla
Honored Contributor

Re: Old patch upgrade files

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 It might be superceded and you may want to check the latest patch.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
You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try
Craig Rants
Honored Contributor

Re: Old patch upgrade files

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
"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is. " Jan L.A. van de Snepscheut
A. Clay Stephenson
Acclaimed Contributor

Re: Old patch upgrade files

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
If it ain't broke, I can fix that.
Santosh Nair_1
Honored Contributor

Re: Old patch upgrade files

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
Life is what's happening while you're busy making other plans
Darrell Allen
Honored Contributor

Re: Old patch upgrade files

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
"What, Me Worry?" - Alfred E. Neuman (Mad Magazine)