Installation guide

Procedure
1. Store the patches in a local location on the target managed machine.
You can extract the patches in this location, if desired.
On Solaris machines, do not use the location of /tmp, because reboots initiated by the patches clear the
content in this directory.
2. Verify that adequate disk space exists on the managed machines for VCMto extract the patches.
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For Linux and UNIXmachines other than Solaris, verify that adequate space exists in /tmp.
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For Solaris machines, verify that adequate space exists in /var/tmp.
3. To set the machine group mapping to the location where you stored the patches, click Administration
and select Settings > General Settings > Patching > Machine Group Mapping.
4. To have VCM deploy the patches to Linux and UNIX managed machines where a reboot is required or
requested, verify that the at daemon is running on the managed machines.
Requirements to Patch AIX Machines
When you use VCM to deploy patches to AIX machines, if the patch prerequisites cannot be resolved by
using the downloaded patch bulletin content, some patches might fail. This problem can occur with an AIX
patch where the status is StatusNotPatched, and the bulletin details identify a patch dependency on
another set of patches whose dependencies cannot be met.
To resolve these patch dependencies on AIX machines, you must determine the patch strategy used for
the file sets, Authorized Program Analysis Reports (APARs), Maintenance Level (ML) packages, and
Technology Level (TL) packages to be updated.
Although patch dependencies might not appear in the bulletin details, dependencies might exist that
cannot be solved. Missing patch prerequisites can occur when some patch versions do not become
applicable until after other patches are installed. Maintenance Level (ML) or Technology Level (TL)
packages and corresponding bulletins that are intended for upgrades between levels, might not appear as
applicable until the ML or TL upgrade is met or exceeded. For example, if you apply a patch that depends
on an intermediate ML that is not yet applied, the patch deployment fails because the prerequisite patch
dependency was not met.
Manually Patching Managed Machines
With VCM 5.7, you can manually assess the patch status of Linux, UNIX, and Windows managed machines
in your environment and manually deploy patches to managed machines.
With manual patching, the patch assessments of Linux and UNIXmachines operate differently from
Windows patch assessments.
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Linux and UNIXpatch assessments require you to collect new patch assessment data from managed
machines before you use VCM to install patches on Linux and UNIXmachines. See "Getting Started
with VCM Manual Patching for Linux and UNIX Managed Machines" on page 143.
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Windows patch assessments run against data that was previously collected from managed machines.
See "Getting Started with VCM Manual Patching for Windows Managed Machines" on page 150.
Manual patching for Linux and UNIX managed machines is illustrated in the following diagram.
Patching Managed Machines
VMware, Inc.
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