Software Distributor Administration Guide for HP-UX 11i

Managing Installed Software
Modifying the IPD (swmodify)
Chapter 3 115
Modifying the IPD (swmodify)
SD-UX keeps track of software installations, products, and filesets on
your system with the Installed Products Database (IPD) for installed
software and with catalog files for software in depots.
Both the IPD and catalog files are created and constantly modified by
other SD-UX operations (swinstall, swcopy, and swremove), they are not
directly accessible if you want to change the information they contain. If
you need to edit the information in either the IPD or in any depots’
catalog files, you must use the swmodify command.
The swmodify command adds, modifies, or deletes software objects or
attributes defined in a software depot, primary root or alternate root. It
is a direct interface to a depot’s catalog files or a root’s Installed Products
Database. It does not change the files that make up the object, it only
manipulates the information that describes the object.
Using swmodify, you can
• Add new bundle, product, subproduct, fileset, control script or file
definitions to existing objects
• Remove the description of software objects from a depot catalog file
or root IPD
• Change attribute values for any existing object.
• Define attributes for new objects that you add.
The equivalent IPD files for a depot are called catalog files. When a depot
is created or modified using swcopy, catalog files are built (by default in
/var/spool/sw/catalog) that describe the depot and its contents.
IPD Contents
Located in the directory /var/adm/sw/products, the IPD is a series of
files and subdirectories that contain information about all the products
that are installed under the root directory (/). This information includes
“tags” or product names, one-line title fields, paragraph-or-longer
description text, long README files, copyright information, vendor
information and part numbers on each product installed. In addition, the
IPD contains revision information and a user-targeted architecture field