HP-UX Software Assistant Frequently Asked Questions (5900-3004, March 2013)

5 Networking
Does SWA use an internet connection?
SWA relies on a catalog file that provides information on all known issues and resolutions for the
supported releases. SWA may also be used to download patches and patch bundles into an
installation-ready depot.
Can I use proxies with SWA?
SWA provides mechanisms to specify proxies via options, environment variables, and configuration
files.
If I don’t have proxies, can I use SWA?
If simple proxies are not sufficient, SWA provides the “-x download_cmd=” option. This option
can be used to specify a user-specified command or script that is passed a URL and returns the
contents via stdout. Several such commands exist as open source including curl and wget or the
GET command included with Perl. These can be used to support complex proxies or combined
with SSH to specify a gateway system. For example, the following command will download a new
SWA catalog file by connecting to the system grendel, as the user guest, via SSH and from there
downloading the content via the Perl GET command: # swa step catalog -x download_cmd="ssh
guest@grendel /opt/perl/bin/GET"
If I don’t have an internet connection can I use SWA?
Systems without any internet connections can be analyzed by moving files. Inventory files can be
moved to an HP-UX system with internet access or uploaded to the ITRC Patch Database for analysis.
Alternatively, the SWA catalog file can be downloaded on a system with access and transferred
to the HP-UX system using media.
What is the check_crl option for?
The catalog file is intended to be downloaded via a secure HTTPS connection. These connections
rely on the validity of certificates issued by a certificate authority (CA). SWA verifies these certificates
remain valid when performing catalog downloads. At times, this certificate check itself may fail.
The check_crl option allows this specific check to be disabled.
8 Networking