Removing Patches on a Solaris System With Zones Installed

The patchrm system utility described in the patchrm(1M) man page is used to remove patches on a system with zones installed.

Using patchrm in the Global Zone

As the global administrator, you can use the patchrm utility in the global zone to remove patches. The patchrm utility cannot remove patches from the global zone only or from a subset of the non-global zones.

Using patchrm in a Non-Global Zone

As the zone administrator, you can use the patchrm utility in a non-global zone to remove patches from that non-global zone only. Patches cannot affect areas that are shared.

PatchPro Support

PatchPro can be used in the global zone and in any non-global zone. If run in the global zone, PatchPro uses the existing patch database and patch tools to patch the global and all non-global zones for all software that is installed on the global zone. No software installed in a non-global zone that is not also installed in the global zone will be taken into account.

A zone administrator can run PatchPro in a non-global zone to patch the software installed in the non-global zone.

Product Database

Each zone's respective package, patch, and product registry database completely describes all installed software that is available on the zone. All dependency checking for installing additional software or patches is performed without accessing any other zone's database, unless a package or patch is being installed or removed on the global zone and on one or more non-global zones. In this case, the appropriate non-global zone database(s) must be accessed.

For more information about the database, see the pkgadm(1M) man page.