5.6

Table Of Contents
Store the UNIX Patches
Store the UNIX patches in a location that is available locally to the VCM managed machine, such as an NFS
mount or a local hard drive. If you store the patches on an NFS mount, you must define the path in
machine group mapping. Click Administration and select Settings > General Settings > Patching >
Machine Group Mapping. You can use VCM remote commands or another available method to place the
patches on the VCM managed machines.
Patch Repository Management
You must manage your own patch repository. A temporary expansion of the patches occurs in the /tmp
directory. For single-user mode, patches are extracted to /var/tmp. If you do not use Machine Group
Mapping to define an alternate location for the patches, the default location of /tmp is used.
Machine Group Mapping
When you define an alternate patch location for a particular machine group, you must select that machine
group in VCM before you deploy the patches. If you do not select this machine group, VCM Patching will
not acknowledge the alternate patch location and the patches will not be deployed. The alternate patch
location is defined in machine group mapping. Click Administration and select Settings > General
Settings > Patching > Machine Group Mapping.
Default Location for UNIX/Linux Patches
If you do not define an alternate location for the patches using machine group mapping, VCM Patching
uses the default location of /tmp. A temporary expansion of the patches occurs in the /var/tmp directory.
This directory includes the extracted patches and working files that VCM Patching uses for patch
deployment. This location must have enough space for these files.
This location must be available in single user mode because some patches on various operating systems
require single-user mode.
Deploy Patches to UNIX/Linux Machines
Install the patches on UNIX and Linux machines that are managed by VCM Patching.
The deployment assesses whether the patch was installed on the VCM managed machine. The Deploy
action exists in the User-created Assessment Template, Imported Template, and Assessment Results for All
Bulletins.
IMPORTANT If a failure occurs at any point in the patch deployment job, the System Administrator must
check the status of the system, resolve any issues, and then reassess the machines.
Prerequisites
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Verify that your UNIX and Linux machines and operating systems are supported for patch
deployment. See the VCM Installation Guide.
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Ensure that patch assessments ran successfully.
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Ensure that patches are available locally to the machine.
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Complete the prerequisites. See "Prerequisites for Patch Deployment" on page 159.
The following procedure deploys the patches using All Bulletins.
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