Software Distributor Administration Guide for HP-UX 11i

Managing Patches
Introduction
Chapter 5 165
Patches that have been applied to an ancestor fileset are listed in the
ancestor’s applied_patches attribute.
HP patches are required to completely replace earlier patches. A newer
version of a patch is said to supersede an earlier version. A patch
fileset’s supersedes attribute lists all previous patch filesets that it
supersedes.
Patch filesets can have dependencies on other patches as well as
non-patch software. When a patch supersedes another patch, it is also
assumed to be able to satisfy any dependencies on that earlier patch.
(See “Patch Supersession and Dependency Resolution” on page 166.)
By default, patches installed on a target system can be rolled back, that
is, the files that the patch replaced are stored in a special save area so
they can be restored if you remove the patch later on.
A patch that has been installed on a target system is assigned a
patch_state attribute value that indicates whether it can be rolled back
and whether it has been superseded.
Patches can be selected and managed explicitly, or automatically as part
of the selection of non-patch software.
You can manage patches separately from regular software items.
Selection for installation and listing is supported by the category_tag
attribute and special patch management options to SD commands.
See “Packaging Patch Software” on page 182 in this chapter for complete
information on patch-related attributes and objects.
Patch Installation Paradigm
On HP-UX 10.x, SD-UX did not distinguish patch software from
non-patch software. The match_target command option was used to
select the appropriate patches for software present on the target.
This paradigm has changed for HP-UX 11.x with the addition of new
functionality:
• SD now distinguishes patches from non-patch software based on new,
patch-specific software attributes.
•The match_target option is still supported, but is now used only for
the selection of non-patch software. A new option,
patch_match_target, is used to select patches that correspond to
the software already present on a target depot or root.