Patch bundles

Patch bundles play an important role in patch management. A patch bundle is a collection of patches that have been grouped into a single software object to meet a specific need. Many HP-UX users find that acquiring and installing these bundles, as opposed to acquiring and installing patches individually, simplifies the patch management process.

Your first encounter with patch bundles might be with the standard HP-UX patch bundles. These bundles contain patches that HP has assembled to meet a specific need. For example, the basic purpose of Quality Pack patch bundles is to deliver defect-fix patches for proactive maintenance. HP releases updated versions of the bundles on a regular schedule and tests them to ensure a high level of reliability. Using standard HP-UX patch bundles can be a less error-prone and more efficient way to patch a system than acquiring and installing individual patches. For more information, see Chapter 5: “What are standard HP-UX patch bundles?” (page 52).

Each patch bundle includes all patch dependencies for the successful installation of all patches that apply to a system. Additionally, some patch bundles, such as HWEnable11i and FEATURE11i, deliver patches for the successful installation of product bundles that include I/O driver products, for example, USB-00. The selection of product bundles with patch dependencies will result in the automatic selection of required patches from the applicable patch bundle. This automatic selection of patch dependencies can simplify the management and installation of products or patches with patch dependencies.

Patch bundles also make it easier for you to determine the current level of patches on a system. For example, there could be hundreds of individual patches contained in an installed bundle, but the swlist command lists, by default, only the bundle name rather than each individual patch contained in the bundle.

For example, if you installed the December 2003 Quality Pack patch bundles on an HP-UX 11i

v1 (B.11.11) system, output for the bundles would be similar to the following:

GOLDAPPS11i B.11.11.0312.4 Gold Applications Patches for HP-UX 11i v1, December 2003

GOLDBASE11i B.11.11.0312.4 Gold Base Patches for HP-UX 11i v1, December 2003

For more information about listing the products on a system, see “Which patches are on a system?” (page 21).

You might also find yourself working with patch bundles if you use the ITRC Patch Assessment Tool, which allows you to create your own custom patch bundles. For more information, see Chapter 10: “The Patch Assessment Tool” (page 88).

Software depots and patch depots

Software depots, or simply depots, are an integral part of patch management. A depot is a special type of file or directory that has been formatted for use by SD-UX as a software repository. In the general case, depots contain a diverse array of software products. A depot can exist as a directory tree on a SD-UX file system or on CD or DVD media, and it can exist as a tape archive (tar) archive on serial media (tape). All depots share a single logical format, independent of the type of media on which the depot resides. Depots can reside on a local or remote system. You can package software directly into a depot or copy packaged software into the depot from elsewhere. This guide focuses on depots as repositories for patches and patch bundles. Such depots can be referred to as patch depots.

Patch depots are a very effective mechanism for managing patches. You can create your own custom patch depots to meet various patch management needs. You can also create special depots to be located on a patch server that acts as a source for patch or bundle installations on other systems.

HP uses patch depots to deliver patches and patch bundles. For more information about depots, see Chapter 7: “Using software depots for patch management” (page 64).

18 HP-UX patch overview