patch dependencies - two answers

[Michael Murphy_2]

Hello - I had a question about what I have seen when trying to download a patch from the ITRC for hp-ux. If I look into the description of the patch I see a list of patch dependencies. When I go to download the patch the download recommends to download other patchs that are dependencies. These two list of recommendations for dependencies don't match (usually the dependencies listed in the patch description are much smaller in number than the download recommendations). Anyone know why this is???

[Ken Penland_1 · Accepted solution]

well, I am not official, but this is the way I view it:

the dependencies listed in the documentation for the patch are the dependencies that are REQUIRED for the patch to install, it actually checks to make sure those depenencies are already on the system or included in the install, those listed on the website are just dependencies that HP recommends be on the system but you could get away with installing the patch without them.

[Pete Randall]

Michael,

My theory is that the dependencies listed in the patch document were what was known at the time of creation and may not have been updated as recently as the list you see from the download recommendation which should be the latest.


Pete

[Steven E. Protter]

The patch database does a pretty decent job of telling you every patch dependency thats in the database concerning a given patch.

It can't tell whether the patch is already installed.

For the sake of ease of use, when doing a patch, I donwload all dependencies. Then I create a depot. I install it with the -x reinstall=false parameter to swinstall

That keeps me from causing reinstall problems.

If I am integrating it into a quarterly pattch/application depot, I swlist the system and remove the already installed patches from the smaller depot so they don't appear twice in my larger depot.

Just as a explanation, I keep a relatively massive depot containing all patches, dependencies and add in products like secure shell in one place, NFS share. This lets me quickly update a new system with anything I'm currently using.

SEP