patch management and disk usage

[John Downs_1]

Greetings, I'm having issues with disk space that are associated with patch installations. The question is: what can I remove from /var/adm/sw that will maintain system integrity and reduce disk usage? What is the best way to manage this? For example can I remove save or products?

Thanks
-john

[Olav Baadsvik]

Hi,

You can do several things.

1. trim the logfiles.

2. remove superseeded patches.
This can be done with this command:

cleanup -n -c 2

This requires patch PHCO_2437 or later
See the man-page for more info.

Regards
Olav

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi John:

There is only one way to manage the /var/adm/sw/ directory and leave your system in a state that it can still be patched, and that is to use the 'cleanup' utility. This utility will also trim the SD log files in addition to committing patches and removing superseded software copies.

If you are running 10.20, I suggest:

# cleanup

If you are running 11.x, I suggest:

# cleanup -c 1

Have a look at the man pages for more details.

If your system isn't recently patched, download the latest, appropriate 'cleanup' patch (and manpages) from the ITRC Patch Database.

Regards!

...JRF...

[Sanjay_6]

Hi John,

do not try to delete anything manually from the /var/adm/sw directory. To cleanup this directory and reclaim the disk space, try the patch cleanup utility "cleanup". This utility come as a patch,the patch no is PHCO_24347 for 11.0 and PHCO_20824 for 10.20.

This utility runs as a command to cleanup the old/superceded patches. do "man cleanup" for more info on this utility.

Hope this helps.

Regds

[Nick Wickens]

You can stop swinstall from keeping copies of the original patch software by merely creating the file /var/adm/sw/patch/PATCH_NOSAVE.

However I did come unstuck with this recently as it makes patches nearly impossible to remove if tou subsequently find there is a bug in the patch. I had to get HP support to connect in to remove a patch, so now I just added loads more space to /var and keep the patches.

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi (again) John:

As noted, avoid (at your own peril) the "nosave" option during patch management! The patch that you do this for will undoubtedly be the patch you want to back-out. My choice is to run 'cleanup -c 1' to commit patches and regain space in /var/adm/sw/ *before* applying large bundles (like the SupportPlus Quality Pack).

Regards!

...JRF...