showrev -p question

[johnwright007]

Hi,

When doing a showrev -p | grep 108987-09 (for example) I get this.

Patch: 108528-19 Obsoletes: 108874-01, 108966-06, 108979-10, 109153-01, 109236-01, 109291-06, 109296-05, 109309-02, 109313-02, 109345-02, 109348-05, 109350-06, 109571-02, 109656-01, 109663-01, 109801-02, 109880-01, 110096-05, 110118-02, 110121-01, 110132-02, 110133-03, 110134-02, 110141-02, 110201-01, 110225-01, 110231-01, 110372-02, 110517-04, 110599-02, 109041-04, 111050-03, 111205-02, 110101-01, 110562-01, 110384-05, 110783-01, 110850-01, 111372-04, 111456-01, 108947-01, 109048-06, 110180-01, 110552-01, 111541-02, 109052-01, 110556-01, 109054-02, 110558-01, 111207-01, 109056-01, 110196-01, 110554-01, 109472-07, 109740-04, 109742-04, 109060-02, 110182-01, 111537-01, 109062-01, 110186-01, 110186-02, 110595-01, 110932-01, 111054-02, 109181-04, 109279-19, 109904-05, 109906-06, 109954-01, 110098-01, 110383-02, 111035-01, 111884-02, 111919-04, 112334-02, 113290-04, 113298-02, 113306-04 Requires: 108987-09, 111111-03, 111293-01, 111310-01, , Incompatibles: 109079-01 Packages: SUNWkvmx, SUNWkvm, SUNWcarx, SUNWcar, SUNWcsu, SUNWcsr, SUNWcslx, SUNWcsl, FJSVhea, SUNWscpu, SUNWmdb, SUNWmdbx, SUNWsrh, SUNWtnfc, SUNWtnfcx, SUNWcsxu, SUNWhea, SUNWpmu, SUNWpmr, SUNWarc, SUNWarcx, SUNWcstl, SUNWcstlx, SUNWcpc, SUNWcpcx, SUNWcpr, SUNWcprx, SUNWefcx, SUNWdrr, SUNWdrrx, SUNWidn, SUNWidnx, SUNWpmux

But as you can see, the patch is not listed as installed. It's only listed as required.

My question is; how can a patch not be installed but be listed as a requirement for a patch that IS installed?

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance.

 

[KenCunningham]

Because the patch that is installed contains information about the patches that it requires to be installed?

 

[johnwright007]

No. If we look at the screen dump above, you can see that patch 108528-19 is installed. Patch 108528-19 requires 108987-09, 111111-03, 111293-01, 111310-01. BUT! Some or all of these required patches aren't installed.

So, how is it possible that the patch 108528-19 is installed when it's prerequisites have not been fulfilled?

John

 

[KenCunningham]

I see where you're coming from, but required doesn't necessarily mean pre-requisite. I may be wrong, but presumably the required patch could be applied after the patch in question, the latter having issued a return code of 25:

25 A required patch is not applied

when it was installed.

(See the FAQ in this forum for more codes)

As far as I know (and I may be shot down in flames), the required patch can therefore be applied afterwards.

 

[johnwright007]

This is about where my knowledge ends on the subject.

Anyone else out there care to enlighten us?

Thanks Ken. Strange one, isn't it?!

 

[alray]

Only yesterday I was applying the latest Solaris Recommended patch to a server and the kernel patch [106541-39] it contained was corrupt. Any later patches in the cluster that required anything later than the patch that was installed were rejected with error code 25 and not processed. Once I had installed the patch manually everything was OK.

Therefore, I'm assuming that pre-requisits have to be fulfilled before you can apply a patch.

Ray

 

[KenCunningham]

Thanks. But that still leaves us with the quandry that apparently patch 108528-19 is installed, without the required patch 108987-09 as described. Whether it does what it's supposed to do or not I don't know, but I wouldn't have thought so.

 

[johnwright007]

Thanks Ken. This still leaves me wandering what's going on?!

We know that pre-requisites have to be fulfilled before you apply a patch - this is why we don't understand how a patch is present and installed when one of the patches it requires is not installed. Bizarre.

An interesting discussion Gents. Thanks!

 

[harris79]

As I understand it, the required patches are only required if the package that they patch is actually loaded.

So in the example above, 108987-09 could be a patch for the Chinese Character Set (just an example), if that character set is not loaded you don't need and can't load the patch.



Steve