Dear All,
Thanks to everyone for the replies to my question about a growing
number of patch backout files in my /var partition.
I received a number of answers, as follows:-
1. Specify to addpatch not to keep backout files.
I didn't want to do this, as I want to keep the ability to back
out patches which break the system, but only for so long. So,
once a patch has been in for a month, I'm happy to lose the
ability to back it out, because I assume it will be okay.
2. Put backout files elsewhere on a bigger partition.
I could do this, but I'm reluctant to keep stuff I think is not
going to be used.
3. Use Caspar Dik's fastpatch.
This seems to be a popular tool, but I'd rather stick to standard
methods for installing patches, even if they're not as good. Also
it meant learning to use another piece of software.
4. Remove just the files you don't need.
This is the one I went for, and was exactly what I was looking for.
The files which I don't need are in /var/sadm/pkg, with names like
*.Z, and in /var/sadm/patch, with names of backoutpatch. I now have
two lines in cron which do the following:-
find /var/sadm/pkg -name "*.Z" -mtime +45 -exec rm {} \;
find /var/sadm/patch -name backoutpatch -mtime +45 -exec rm {} \;
These commands will then remove all backout files which are more than
45 days old, giving my system chance to have let me know if a patch
is causing problems, but not keeping all old stuff. This has reduced
my
/var partition by nearly 100MB altogether, yet showrev -p still
works,
so that patchdiag will function.
Particular thanks go to Marcos Assis Silva for the commands above, but
also to John D Groenveld, Colin Melville, Eugene Choi, Marc Newman,
Danny O'Mahony, Imre Kolos, Marina Daniels and Karl Vogel for their
helpful replies.
Matthew.
-- ------------------------------------------------------------------- Matthew Atkinson Phone: +44 (0) 1904 462120 Sun Systems Technical Administrator Fax: +44 (0) 1904 462111 Information Systems Team Central Science Laboratory E-mail: m.atkinson@csl.gov.uk Sand Hutton, York, YO41 1LZ, England Web: http://www.csl.gov.uk -------------------------------------------------------------------
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