Patch Management User Guide for HP-UX 11.x Systems (5900-3011, April 2013)

The Warning field contains the following information:
• The issue date of any warnings (year/month/day format)
• Whether the patch warning is critical or noncritical (see “Critical and noncritical warnings”
(page 41))
• A description of the problem
• A suggested course of action for the problem might be provided
• A reference to a replacement patch might be provided
See “Finding information for a specific patch” (page 38) for a description of how you can access
a patch details page and a patch text file.
Critical and noncritical warnings
Patch warnings are either critical or noncritical. You can find this information in the first line of the
Warning field in the patch's patch details page or in the patch text file.
HP considers a patch warning to be critical if the patch causes or exposes a critical problem.
Examples of critical patches include the following:
• System panic or hang
• Process abort, hang, or failure
• Data corruption
• Severe performance degradation
• Application-specific critical issues
HP considers a patch warning to be noncritical if the patch causes or exposes a noncritical problem.
Noncritical problems are those other than the ones described previously. Examples of noncritical
problems include the following:
• Extraneous debug, warning, or error messages
• Failure to address all documented issues
• Minor regressions in behavior
How to handle patch warnings
Your initial response to a warning for a patch on a system should be to carefully read the associated
warning text and research the issue to gain a complete understanding of how or if the warning
will impact the system.
Because of the number and complexity of the factors involved, there is no single correct way of
dealing with a patch with a warning. The following items show some possible courses of action:
• In some cases, such as if you encounter a critical problem on the system, immediate removal
of the patch might be necessary.
• In many cases, removal and replacement can wait until the next scheduled maintenance
window.
• In other cases, such as when the problem does not affect the hardware or software
configuration, there is no need for you to take any action. In fact, HP discourages unnecessary
change because it can cause down time and because there is always some risk when making
a change to the system.
Patch warnings 41