[geeks] Suprise - ext. USB HD "Just Worked" under Solaris 10

[Sandwich Maker]

" From: velociraptor <velociraptor at gmail.com>
" 
" 
" If you are working for a paranoid organization or one that needs to
" save bandwidth, and have contract support, you can get a patch server
" proxy software from Sun so that you can download updates to a central
" repository in your own organization.  This also allows you to keep
" your boxes at the same patch revision in the case where it would take
" you longer than 2 weeks to patch everything.  (Sun releases patches
" 2x/month, iirc.)

their policy has changed in at least some respects.  they now update
the patchdiag.xref -daily-, and while i run my patch check only on
fridays it's unusual to go a week without at least one new patch.
--
as for proxy s/w, 11 years ago i wrote a ksh script that parsed the
patch report [sunos 4.1.4 it was, then], compared the patch list with
what my repository already had, and ftped any new ones.  manually i
ran a script that purged superseded revisions, but i could've
incorporated it into the fetch.  btw until a couple of years ago the
report came out monthly.

to facilitate pushing updates, i made an area with empty directory
trees; kernel, openwin, and everything else.  files from the patches
[sunos4, remember] were placed in the trees in their proper relative
places by hand.  the trees could then be rdisted to clients, and the
only problem i had was when rdist itself was one of the patches.

i still run descendants - a patchk ksh wrapper for sun's patchk perl
script, cgetpatch, cleanup, dopatch...  the only thing i wish i had
was a patch dependency tool, so i could automatically order patch
installation correctly.

it would be trivial to automate remote execution of patchk and
dopatch.  do i need sun's patch server proxy?

btw when sun finally shut ftp off i tried to get patchpro working, but
it was easier to rewrite my scripts with curl instead of ftp than try
to figure out the necessary mojo.
________________________________________________________________________
Andrew Hay                                  the genius nature
internet rambler                            is to see what all have seen
adh at an.bradford.ma.us                       and think what none thought