Patch Management User Guide for HP-UX 11.x Systems (5900-3011, April 2013)
Table Of Contents
- Patch Management User Guide for HP-UX 11.x Systems
- Contents
- 1 HP-UX patches and patch management
- 2 Quick start guide for patching HP-UX systems
- 3 HP-UX patch overview
- 4 Patch management overview
- Patch management life cycle
- HP service contracts
- Patch management and software change management strategies
- Establishing a software change management strategy
- Recommendations for software change management
- Consideration of HP patch rating
- Patch management and software depots
- Proactive patching strategy
- Reactive patching strategy
- Advanced topic: security patching strategy
- Advanced topic: scanning for security patches
- Testing the patches to be installed
- 5 What are standard HP-UX patch bundles?
- 6 Using the HP Support Center
- Obtaining an HPSC user account
- Useful pages on the HPSC
- Find individual patches
- Advanced topic: checking for special installation instructions
- Advanced topic: checking for all patch dependencies
- Standard patch bundles
- Custom patch bundles - run a patch assessment
- Support information digests
- Ask your peers in the forums
- Search knowledge base
- 7 Using software depots for patch management
- Common software distributor commands for patching
- Depot types
- Using depots
- Viewing depots
- Creating and adding to a directory depot
- Registering and unregistering directory depots
- Verifying directory depots
- Removing software from a directory depot
- Removing a directory depot
- Installing patches from a depot
- Custom patch bundles
- 8 Using HP-UX Software Assistant for patch management
- 9 Using Dynamic Root Disk for patch management
- 10 The Patch Assessment Tool
- 11 Support and other resources
- A Patch usage models
- Glossary
- Index
Rating details
The following list provides more details on patch ratings of 2:
• These patches have met minimum criteria based on the number of days available to customers
and the number of times downloaded with no problems reported.
• These patches might appear in the recommended column of the HPSC's Patch Database patch
search results page (provided they have no associated patch warnings).
HP patch rating of 3
Rating 3 is the highest rating HP assigns to a patch. These patches represent the lowest level of
risk. HP recommends you use patches rated 3 whenever possible for both proactive and reactive
patching.
If you are waiting for a specific patch to reach a rating of 3, check the patch quarterly to determine
whether it has been promoted from a rating of 2 to a rating of 3.
Rating details
The following list provides more details on patch ratings of 3:
• These patches have passed more levels of testing than patches rated 1 or 2.
• These patches might appear in the recommended column of the HPSC's Patch Database patch
search results page (provided they have no associated patch warnings).
Critical and noncritical patches
HP-UX patches are considered to be either critical or noncritical. You can determine whether a
patch is labeled as critical by looking at the Critical field on the patch details page or in the patch
text file for the patch. This field identifies newly delivered critical content.
HP considers a patch to be critical if the patch provides a fix for a critical problem. Examples
include patches that provide fixes for the following problems:
• System panic or hang
• Process abort, hang, or failure
• Data corruption
• Severe performance degradation
• Application-specific critical issues
HP considers a patch to be noncritical if the patch provides fixes for only noncritical problems.
Examples of noncritical problems include the following:
• Extraneous debug, warning, or error messages
• Failure to address all documented issues
• Minor regressions in behavior
A patch is considered critical if it contains any critical fixes, even if they were introduced in earlier
(superseded) patches. The Critical field for such a patch contains the following text:
"No (superseded patches were critical)"
In addition, the field gives the ID of the patch that introduced the critical fix. The Critical field for
patch PHSS_30011 is shown in the following screen. It shows that superseded patch PHSS_29735
actually introduced the critical fix.
Critical:No (superseded patches were critical)
PHSS_29735: CORRUPTION
Critical and noncritical patches 37