Checking Solaris™ patch levels

Technote (FAQ)
Problem
Crashes, hangs and high CPU stemming from the Solaris OS or SDK.
Cause
Solaris administrators should ensure their Java™ 2 Standard Edition (J2SE™) patches are current. The J2SE Solaris Patch Clusters contains essential Solaris patches to ensure proper functionality of Sun's J2SE products. This is a prerequisite for keeping your Solaris J2EE environment in a good working state.
Solution
You can verify that your Solaris operating system patches are up-to-date by using a Perl script called patchcheck. To use this script, follow these steps:
  1. Download the Patch Check Tool and uncompress to a directory on the local system.
  2. Download the latest cross-reference file to the same directory as the Perl script from previous step.
  3. Execute the following command:

    perl ./patchk.pl -l > report.txt
  4. Review report.txt output to determine current Solaris patch levels.
  5. To determine which J2SE patches require updating review the readme from the J2SE patch download. The J2SE Solaris Patch Cluster is available for download at:
    http://sunsolve.sun.com/pub-cgi/show.pl?target=patches/patch-access
  6. Compare the patch numbers in the readme download to the report.txt. The report.txt should indicate whether Solaris is at current patch levels.

It is important to obtain a current cross-reference (.xref) file every time the Patch Check Tool is run. The compressed patch download comes with a user guide for further instructions.

Alternatively, use the Patch Check Tool from a different machine if the following files are collected from the Solaris machine in question:
  1. showrev -p showrev.out
  2. pkginfo -l pkginfo.out
  3. uname -a > uname.out











Document Information

Product categories: Software, Application Servers, Distributed Application & Web Servers, WebSphere Application Server, Java SDK
Operating system(s): Solaris
Software version: 3.5, 4.0, 5.0, 5.1, 6.0
Software edition: Edition Independent
Reference #: 1162380
IBM Group: Software Group
Modified date: 2004-12-06