SUMMARY: how to manually update files so that showrev -p is reasonable?

From: Christopher L. Barnard (cbarnard@cs.uchicago.edu)
Date: Mon Mar 25 1996 - 15:08:58 CST


I originally asked:

> I've got a bunch of Solaris 2.5 clients that have their root and /usr
> partitions NFS exported from a SunOS 4.1.x machine (an Auspex, actually).
> Because the (stupid) installpatch scripts that come with Sun Patches
> assume that the /usr partition on a fileserver is the /usr partition
> for all of its clients, I can't use installpatch to install my
> patches. This in itself isn't a problem - I just copy the files in by
> hand. However, when I do this the output of "showrev -p" is not updated.
> I've read through the installpatch script, and played around with files
> and directory names in /var/sadm, and looked at a truss output of showrev,
> but I can't figure out where showrev gets its information. I'd really like
> to manually update the necessary files so that showrev will show what
> patches have been installed on these clients. If anyone knows the files
> that showrev looks at to determine what patches are installed, I'd love
> to hear about it... Thanks much.

And the answer is:

Its doable, but I've decided that its more trouble than its worth.

What is entailed is going into /var/sadm/pkg and creating a subdirectory
for the name of the package that you have updated. In that subdirectory
you then need to copy the pkginfo file from the patch hierarchy.
showrev -p will then show that that patch is added. There is no elegant
way to add a comment (like "I added thiso ne manually") and I didn't
determine a way to show that a package has been updated by two or more
patches.

Thanks to

leclerc@austin.asc.slb.com
mark@ukhayq.CV.COM
seeger@cis.ufl.edu (F. L. Charles Seeger III)
greg.harrison@analog.com (greg harrison)

for suggestions on where to look and what man pages to read.

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