Get started with Solaris 11 patching

The advantage of the IPS package structure is that it contains the metadata and the binaries, combined. IPS packages are used for everything from the initial software installation to the updates. Because IPS packages are so complete, they have internal integrity, which means they require the complete package and are not divided into patch units.

Because of these structural differences, there are some typical patching functions that are not relevant for Solaris 11.

The process for creating a vendor recommended patch policy is different. For example, Solaris 10 looks at installed packages and computes what needs to be updated based on the existing installations. With Solaris 11, Server Automation uses the IPS tools to find the recommended patches and their dependencies.

SA comes with a predefined software policy, Solaris 11 IPS Package Acquisition Tool, which enables you to set up the initial IPS Package database.

Summary

Complete the following steps to set up your initial IPS Package database and enable Solaris 11 patching with SA. The initial IPS Package acquisition only needs to be done using one Solaris 11 managed server. After the initial acquisition, additional updates will need to be done periodically to maintain compliance. These instructions are just for the initial acquisition.

RECOMMENDATION: The entire IPS Package repository could be as large as 40 GB. To make sure there is ample room on your server, choose a Solaris 11 managed server with 100GB or more.

This summary has two parts:

• Set up your Solaris 11 IPS Package Database
• Create a recommended patch policy and remediate your Solaris 11 managed servers

Detailed instructions for each of these steps are provided under Set up Solaris 11 managed server for SA patching.

To set up your Solaris 11 IPS package database:

1. Remediate the chosen Solaris 11 managed server with the SA-provided software policy, Solaris 11 IPS Package Acquisition Tools.

   This installs SA UAPI access and IPS import tools on the server, which will be used to acquire IPS packages from the vendor.

2. Complete the import prerequisite steps before importing IPS packages:

   1. Setup Managed Server Customers to have visibility to all relevant IPS packages in the SA Library.
   2. If your environment requires HTTP proxies to access the desired repository, set up the proxies on your managed server before attempting to import the IPS packages.
   3. Configure sol_ips_import.conf

3. Import all IPS packages onto the core by running the IPS import script (sol_ips_import) from the chosen Solaris 11 managed server.

4. If software registration has not yet occurred, run the Software Registration script (bs_software).

This completes the IPS Package Database set-up steps. Next, create the patch policy and remediate your Solaris 11 servers.

To create a recommended patch policy and remediate your Solaris 11 managed servers:

1. Create the recommended patch policy for the managed server by running the patch policy script (solpatch_import) on the core.
2. From the SA Client, attach the recommended patch policy to the server and remediate.