Solaris for personal use - downloading patches?

[Annihilannic]

As an ex-Solaris admin I like to keep my knowledge up to date, so I run a VirtualBox Solaris 10 x86 VM.

I have fallen behind on patches and the update manager is as useless as ever, presenting an empty error message dialogue box with just an "OK" button on it.

So I go to find the 10_Recommended patch bundle... and can't get to it anywhere. All of the sun.com links are gone now of course (yet Oracle continues to reference them!). I found a guide about how to download them through Metalink but it seems like I don't have entitlement; I could locate the files to download but not actually download them. I do have Metalink access for Oracle DB support purposes.

Is there is still a legitimate way for personal users who don't require support plans to keep their Solaris systems up to date?

Annihilannic
[small]tgmlify - code syntax highlighting for your tek-tips posts[/small]

 

[KenCunningham]

Hi Anni. Yes, this has been exercising us too (in a production environment!), but I think you can apply for access to the Solaris patch area via your Oracle DB account? Might be worth asking the question via your Oracle DB Metalink account?

The internet - allowing those who don't know what they're talking about to have their say.

 

[Annihilannic]

A work colleague pointed me to this interesting link:

https://blogs.oracle.com/patch/entry/a_solaris_recommended_patchset_to

However the resources it points to are ultimately the same as those in Metalink, and my level of access gives me "You are not entitled to retrieve this content."

So I'll try asking Oracle nicely as you suggest, but my gut feeling is that they only understand requests with purchase orders attached... ;-)

Annihilannic
[small]tgmlify - code syntax highlighting for your tek-tips posts[/small]

 

[cndcadams]

Oracle has locked down the patching and without a valid software account you are unable to get patches in the MOS database

I have many customers who are transitioning off their Sun systems do to Oracle stance on providing patches.

However there are many Law suites in the works. I have heard third hand that one of the law suites was settled that would allow Customers who have older systems and had valid contracts at the time of the takeover to get critical patches such as firmware and Recommended clusters, security patches etc for the older boxes and OS. There however does seem to be some confusion on this as another person told me it was a a European based suite.

I have found the transition to the Oracle site quite aggravating. The old doc references I had are useless for the most part (you would think they would have linked them to their new numbering scheme).

I recently had got a Sun STK SE6130 for supporting some of our customer systems, and while trying to match our customers firmware levels on components have found that Oracle no longer provides the older CAM versions(which include the baseline firmware versions) has really put me in a bad spot.