Patch Management

[Atif Malik_2]

Can someone please provide me a good patch management strategy/documentation.
I'm trying to implement a new strategy for handling the patches. Any input will
be appreciated.

-Atif

[Fernando Santana]

There is a patch manager utility in the HP site which
after you go through it, you'll get an installable depot of the patches your
system needs.

Yet, the easiest way is to get your HP-UX Support Plus CD which comes with
all the patches your system needs to getting uptodate.

[Atif Malik_2]

Thanks for the response. I think what you were talking about was CPM (Custom
Patch Management). Where I ran a script and upload the list of patches on my
server to HP server and they recommend the latest patches that my system needs.

But that's not exactly what I was looking for.

I'm in a situation where my client has over 1,000 servers (K-class and D-class)
all running 10.20. And they don't want the latest patches. They want to be
atleast 3-6 months behind in patch level (due to patch recalls, and it makes
sense to me).

I've made a depot of all the patches that needs to be applied, but how can I
keep the depot uptodate. Is there a way to find out what patches that are on
the server have been superseded?

I know there's a command in 11.x HPUX called show_patches (only after PHCO_1955
has been installed) that lists all the active patches on the system. Is there
a similar command on HPUX 10.20?

Does HP-UX 10.20 have an equivalent command that I can use to flag "critical'
patches in a depot?

[John Paine_2]

show_patches(PHCO_19550)only works for 11.0
As far as I know there is no equivalent for 10.20
although you can trawl through the man page for
swlist.You'll have to laboriously check every patch for supercession (as I had
to) or just load the extension
s/w from CD 3 months in arrears.