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Patching Resources

This section provides links to overview information about patching the Solaris OS.

Register Your Gear

To automate your patching, register your gear at either:



Solaris 10 Patch Bundles for Solaris Updates
Patch Bundles are downloadable from the SunSolve Patch Cluster & Patch Bundle Download Page. Patch Clusters and Patch Bundles are popular collections of patches providing specific functionality. They contain an install script for ease of installation. For more details, see:



Beginners

Are you new to installing patches on a system running the Solaris OS?

  • FAQs
  • Patching for the Solaris OS - Read article
  • Ask the Expert - online question and answer session about patching issues. See the XPerts page for session transcripts.

Patch Corner blog
This blog covers all the latest news on patching.

Printing Errors Can be Resolved With Patches
New features in Solaris 10 5/08 (Update 5) introduced printing errors. Most of these can be resolved with patches. Two Sun Alerts resolve many of these issues. Read blog

Solaris 10 Patch Management: Best Practices
Learn strategies for patching a Solaris 10 system, proactively, reactively, or for security or for installing a new system.
Read article

Solaris Patch Management: Recommended Strategy
A white paper that helps clarify the patch managment process.
Read article

A Bug's Lifecycle
An overview of how a bug becomes a patch
Read article

Overview of Patch Types and Dependencies
Definitions of patch types are provided, as well as a review of the basic interrelationships between patches
Read article

Overview of Recommended and Sun Alert Patches
Describes the difference between the Solaris Recommended Patch Clusters and the Solaris Sun Alert Patch Clusters.
Read article

What Is the Solaris 10 5/08 Patch Bundle?
The Solaris 10 5/08 Patch Bundle provides another option to customers who are devising a patching strategy to maintain their Solaris systems. This article describes why and how to use this Patch Bundle and how to download.
Read article

Use Solaris Live Upgrade to Upgrade From Solaris 8 OS to Solaris 10
You can now use Solaris Live Upgrade to upgrade from Solaris 8 to Solaris 10.
Read article

Interim Diagnotics or Relief (IDRs)
An overview of IDRs. An IDR is software to help diagnose a customer issue or provide preliminary, temporary relief for an issue.
Read article

Solaris Patch Testing
An overview of Solaris patch system test and performance QA testing
Read article

Patch Rejuvenation Process
An overview of the patch rejuvenation process that happens when patches become overly large or complex Read article

For articles with step-by-step instructions, see the How To tab.



Advanced

Do you have patching experience, but need more information?

Deferred-Activation Patchinge
Patch utillities have been improved to better handle the large scope of change delivered in feature patches, such as Kernel patches. Use Solaris Live Upgrade to patch a copy of the original boot environment to minimize downtime and reduce risk by providing fallback capability if needed.

However, for customers patching a live partition, Sun has implemented the deferred-activation patching enhancement. Deferred-activation patching ensures system consistency during the patching process. This modification affects how these patches are installed on any Solaris 10 release.

See What's new in patching the Solaris OS?

Ask the Expert FAQ - online question and answer session about patching issues. See the XPerts page for session transcripts.

For articles with step-by-step instructions, see the How To tab.