Chapter 3Runtime Issues With Solaris Patch Management Tools
This chapter describes common problems you might encounter when using the Solaris patch management tools to do the following:
Analyze systems to determine the list of recommended patches
Download the recommended patches to the system
Apply the recommended patches on the system
For additional troubleshooting information, see the Signed Patches Administration Guide for PatchPro 2.2.
 Caution - Solaris 9, Solaris 9 9/02, and Solaris 9 12/02 only - If you expect to apply a large number of patches to your system, use the pprosvc -i command instead of smpatch.
If you use smpatch, all of the recommended patches might not be downloaded. If the download fails, no patches are applied to the system.
You might encounter this problem in one or both of these circumstances:
Wrong Version of the smpatch(1M) Man Page Appears on Solaris 9 Systems (4860008)
| Description: | The wrong version of the smpatch(1M) man page appears when you run the man command on a Solaris 9 system.
The smpatch(1M) man page that appears pertains to the Solaris 2.6, Solaris 7, and Solaris 8 version of the smpatch command.
| | Cause: | This happens when the /opt/SUNWppro/man directory appears ahead of the /usr/man directory in your MANPATH.
| | Workaround: | Ignore the version of the smpatch(1M) man page that is installed in the /opt/SUNWppro/man/man1m directory.
Instead, refer to the man page installed in the /usr/man/sman1m directory, which contains the Solaris 9 version of the smpatch command.
# man -M /usr/man -s 1m smpatch
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Or, ensure that the /usr/man directory appears ahead of the /opt/SUNWppro/man directory in your MANPATH.
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smpatch add Does Not Use the Patch Directory Specified by the -d Option (4888820)
| Description: | When you specify the patch directory on the smpatch add command line by using the -d option, the following error appears:
Error: PatchPro failed: CRITICAL: Invalid patch source directory.
Problem Summary:
(1) Patch source directory does not exist. Verify that the patch source
directory exists or set the patch source directory to an existing
directory with pprosetup -d <download_directory>
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| | Workaround: | Do not use the -d option with any of the smpatch subcommands to specify a patch directory.
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Patch Manager on Solaris 9 Systems Fails Because the /var/sadm/spool Directory Cannot Be Recreated (4883158)
| Description: | On a Solaris 9 system, Patch Manager reports that it cannot create the patch directory, /var/sadm/spool, because it already exists.
When you run the smpatch command, the following error message appears:
# /usr/sadm/bin/smpatch download
Authenticating as user: root
Type /? for help, pressing <enter> accepts the default denoted by [ ]
Please enter a string value for: password ::
Loading Tool: com.sun.admin.patchmgr.cli.PatchMgrCli from host1
Login to host1 as user root was successful.
Download of com.sun.admin.patchmgr.cli.PatchMgrCli from host1 was
successful.
Cannot create the directory /var/sadm/spool.
Please check the permissions.
#
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This problem causes Patch Manager to be unusable.
| | Cause: | This problem appears on systems that have been upgraded from Solaris 9 12/02 to Solaris 9 4/03.
The CIM File System Management Provider was not reregistered after the system upgrade. Therefore, the service provider was not available for use by Patch Manager.
| | Workaround: | Reregister the directory service provider and restart the CIMOM:
# /etc/init.d/init.wbem stop
# /usr/sadm/bin/mofreg -r regtag /usr/sadm/mof/Solaris_VM1.0.mof
# /etc/init.d/init.wbem start
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pprosvc Silently Creates a Nonexistent Patch Directory (4884494)
| Description: | The pprosvc command silently creates a nonexistent patch directory that you specified by using the pprosetup -d command.
| | Cause: | You specified a nonexistent directory to be the patch directory.
| | Workaround: | Ensure that the patch directory exists before you run the pprosvc command.
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pprosvc Issues Error When the Sequester Directory Does Not Exist (4884494)
CRITICAL: Sequester directory is not writable.
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| Description: | The pprosvc -i command fails with the following error message:
CRITICAL: Sequester directory is not writable.
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This failure occurs when patches must be moved to the sequester directory, which does not exist.
| | Cause: | The sequester directory, that you specified by using the pprosetup -q command, does not exist.
| | Workaround: | Ensure that the sequester directory exists before you run the pprosvc command.
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Server Failure Not Detected While Downloading the Patch Database (4876039)
| Description: | Occasionally, PatchPro fails to detect a transient network failure and erroneously concludes that the download of the patch database succeeded.
| | Cause: | HTTP servers that support keep-alive might terminate a connection prematurely. When the connection terminates, the server sends less data to PatchPro than originally specified.
PatchPro ignores a connection termination that was initiated by the server. PatchPro also claims that the download was successful.
| | Workaround: | If you detect this problem, download the patch database again.
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