HP Certified: HP-UX System Administration

HP-UX patches are software components that are released by Hewlett-Packard. These are used for one of the following purposes.

• to add new functionality to the HP-UX operating system or products

• to add support for new hardware; for example, support may be added for new types of adapters

• to fix bugs in the operating system and applications

Patch management is an ongoing system administration task in HP-UX, as many patches are released from time to time.

Patch Sources

Patches can be obtained using your Web browser through WWW or FTP. The WWW site address is:

http://ITResourceCenter.hp.com

The FTP site address is:

ftp://us-ffs.external.hp.com/hp-ux_patches

You can also order a patch CD-ROM from Hewlett-Packard to obtain a collection of all patches.

CUSTOM PATCH MANAGER

This tool is available on the Hewlett-Packard Web site. It can be used to take inventory of existing software installed on your system and suggest needed patches. To use the custom patch manager, your system needs to be connected to the Internet and you must have a Personalized System Support Agreement with Hewlett-Packard.

Types of Patches

All patch names start with PH . The next two characters show the type of patch. Following that, there is an underscore character and a four- or five-digit patch number. At the end of the patch name , there may be some other words to show the specific use of the patch. Depending on the characters in the type field, there are four types of patches as listed here.

• Command patches. The type field for these is CO.

• Kernel patches. The type field for these is KL.

• Network patches. The type field for these is NE.

• Subsystem patches. The type field for these is SS. These patches include all other types of patches.

Some example patch names are:

• PHSS_16473

• PHSS_14158

• PHCO_15623

• PHKL_16189

Usually you need to reboot the system after installing a kernel patch.

Listing Installed Patches

The procedure for listing patches is different for HP-UX versions. If you are using HP-UX 10.x, you can use following command.

swlist -l product PH*

On HP-UX 11.00, use:

swlist -l patch '*.*,c=patch'

or

swlist -l patch