HP-UX 11i v2 Installation and Update Guide, December 2007

Installing HP Applications and Patches
HP-UX Patching and Patch Management
Chapter 7 129
HP-UX Patching and Patch Management
HP releases patches to deliver incremental updates to your system.
Patches are best known for delivering defect fixes, but also deliver new
functionality and features, enable new hardware, and update firmware.
You can use HP-UX patches to update HP-UX software without having to
completely reinstall your system application.
Hewlett-Packard provides several methods to patch HP-UX systems:
• Standard HP-UX patch bundles
• Individual HP-UX patches
• HP-UX Software Assistant
• Dynamic Root Disk Toolset
Standard HP-UX Patch Bundles
The HP-UX OE media provides standard HP-UX patch bundles for
HP-UX core file sets and applications, plus diagnostic products.
Standard patch bundles are collections of patches that have been
thoroughly tested together. These bundles enable new hardware, fix
known defects, and provide diagnostics tools. In some cases, a patch
bundle may deliver new software functionality. All bundle software is
cumulative and replaces completely any previous bundle release for the
same operating system (OS) release. The standard HP-UX patch bundles
are also available on the HP IT Resource Center web site at:
http://itrc.hp.com.
Individual HP-UX Patches
Individual HP-UX patches comprise the Standard HP-UX patch bundles.
The individual patches and patch bundles are available from the Patch
Database on the HP IT Resource Center web site at:
http://itrc.hp.com.
At times, you may find it necessary to acquire and install individual
patches, for example, based on known patch IDs, software functionality,
reactive patching, and security issues.