Selecting the Best Method for Applying Patches and Updates

You can use several different methods to download or apply one or more patches or updates to your system. Use the following table to determine which method is best for your needs.

Note

Starting with the Solaris 10 1/06 and the Solaris Express 10/05 releases, the smpatch command-line interface has been updated for use with the Sun Update Connection software. If you are running the Solaris 10 initial release, and you want to use Sun Update Connection, install the appropriate patches or upgrade your system to the Solaris Express 10/05 release. For more information, see What's New in Software Management in the Solaris Operating System?.

For information about registering your system after you install the Solaris software, see the Chapter 18, Registering Your Solaris Express 3/06 or 10/05 Software (Tasks).

Command or Tool

Description

For More Information

smpatch update

Starting with the Solaris 8 release – Use this command to analyze your system to determine the appropriate patches and to automatically download and apply the patches. Note that this command will not apply a patch that has the interactive property set.

Note

For Solaris 8 systems, only the local mode smpatch is available.

How to Update Your System With Patches (Command Line)

smpatch ( 1M ) man page

smpatch analyze and smpatch update

Starting with the Solaris 8 release – First, use smpatch analyze to analyze your system to determine the appropriate patches. Then, use smpatch update to download and apply one or more of the patches to your system.

Note

For Solaris 8 systems, only the local mode smpatch is available.

How to Analyze Your System to Obtain the List of Patches to Apply (Command Line)

How to Update Your System With Patches (Command Line)

smpatch ( 1M ) man page

smpatch analyze, smpatch download, and smpatch add

Starting with the Solaris 8 release – First, use smpatch analyze to analyze your system to determine the appropriate patches. Then, use smpatch download to download them. This command also downloads any prerequisite patches. Then, use smpatch add to apply one or more of the patches to your system while the system is in single-user or multiuser mode.

Note

For Solaris 8 systems, only the local mode smpatch is available.

Managing Patches by Using the Command-Line Interface (Task Map)

smpatch ( 1M ) man page

patchadd

Starting with the Solaris 2.6 release – Apply unsigned patches to your system.

Starting with the Solaris 9 12/03 release – Use this command to apply either signed or unsigned patches to your system. To apply signed patches, you must first set up your package keystore.

Chapter 23, Managing Solaris Patches by Using the patchadd Command (Tasks)

patchadd ( 1M ) man page

Solaris Management Console Patches tool

Starting with the Solaris 9 release – Use this tool when you want the convenience of a GUI tool to manage signed patches.

Solaris Management Console online help

Note

In this Solaris release, the smpatch command-line interface has been updated for use with the Sun Update Connection, System Edition software. For more information, see What's New in Software Management in the Solaris Operating System?.