Comparing Patches

It is vital to regularly update your system in order to ensure you have the latest and most stable version of AIX and its utilities, and to protect yourself against attack. Failure to keep your systems up to date can also mean that if you have to call support a lot time could be wasted installing patches before you can implement a satisfactory solution.

Fortunately IBM has some tools that can make the job of maintaining patch leves, and install updates, much easier. When you visit Fix Central and select your patches there is a compare report link next to each patch set e.g.

If you download this text file to your AIX system you can then use the compare_report command to see which fixes you need and how the level of your system compares to that of the patch-set. e.g.

# compare_report -s -r ./6100-08-00-1241.compare -h -v

This example will  generate a list of the patch-sets that are of a higher or lower level than those in the fix-pack. For more details see the compare_report man page.

Once you have downloaded your patch-sets to your system you can either install them from smit or  by using my preferred method:

Change to the directory where you dowloaded the patches and run:

# inutoc .
# install_all_updates -Yd .
install_all_updates: Initializing system parameters.
install_all_updates: Log file is /var/adm/ras/install_all_updates.log
install_all_updates: Checking for updated install utilities on media.
...
install_all_updates: Result = SUCCESS

(Where -Y accepts all licence agreements and -d identifies the directory where the patches are stored)

The installation command produces a handy report in"/var/adm/ras/install_all_updates.log" that can be used to analyse the results of the pactch operation.