patches: AIX vs Solaris installation method

Hi all,

I'm looking for some help/advice on patching AIX. We are in the
process of moving from Sun/Solaris to IBM/AIX. We have a few p5
servers running 5.3 and I want to make sure the OS stays up to date.
On Solaris you could just download the latest recommended patch cluster
from Sunsolve, unzip it and install it.

How does it work with AIX? I've been to:

[url]http://www-912.ibm.com/eserver/support/fixes/fcgui.jsp[/url]

I plug in my system info and then have to select from:

Technology Level
Service Pack
Maintenance Level
etc, etc

I have no idea which one I need to download/install. Does AIX have a
'recommended cluster' equivalent? If so am I looking in the right
place?

Dare I inquire about the equivalent to Sun's OBP/firmware?

Thanks

MJB <helios123@cox.net> wrote:[color=blue]
> Hi all,[/color]
[color=blue]
> I'm looking for some help/advice on patching AIX. We are in the
> process of moving from Sun/Solaris to IBM/AIX. We have a few p5
> servers running 5.3 and I want to make sure the OS stays up to date.
> On Solaris you could just download the latest recommended patch cluster
> from Sunsolve, unzip it and install it.[/color]
[color=blue]
> How does it work with AIX? I've been to:[/color]
[color=blue]
> [url]http://www-912.ibm.com/eserver/support/fixes/fcgui.jsp[/url][/color]


Hi,

You might want to start at
[url]http://www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/set2/sas/f/genunix3/aixfixes.html[/url] .
Maintenance Levels (MLs) were renamed to Technology Levels (TLs). Service
Packs (SPs) are fixes on a specific TL. You can download these from the
website, order them on CD or use the SUMA tool in AIX.

IBM has a best practices guide for software maintenance
[url]http://www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/set2/sas/f/best/aix_service_strategy.html[/url] .

Regards,
Greg Young

MJB wrote:[color=blue]
> Hi all,
>
> I'm looking for some help/advice on patching AIX. We are in the
> process of moving from Sun/Solaris to IBM/AIX. We have a few p5
> servers running 5.3 and I want to make sure the OS stays up to date.
> On Solaris you could just download the latest recommended patch cluster
> from Sunsolve, unzip it and install it.
>
> How does it work with AIX? I've been to:
>
> [url]http://www-912.ibm.com/eserver/support/fixes/fcgui.jsp[/url]
>
> I plug in my system info and then have to select from:
>
> Technology Level
> Service Pack
> Maintenance Level
> etc, etc
>
> I have no idea which one I need to download/install. Does AIX have a
> 'recommended cluster' equivalent? If so am I looking in the right
> place?
>
> Dare I inquire about the equivalent to Sun's OBP/firmware?
>
> Thanks[/color]

Look into SUMA. I don't know how many machines you have to maintain or
how you do your provisioning or what not. But we use SUMA on our 520s
and it's great. Every night it downloads the latest patches. We have
a set schedule. We install new patches in the applied state, test
them, and just run them as applied until testing is complete and it is
time to apply a new round of patches. Then we commit all and apply the
new ones. That's an important step.

So give smitty suma a look and see if it helps you out. You will have
to do a little work to configure it, but nothing terribly
sophisticated. The only information you should need with respect to
maintenance levels etc. is your output from oslevel -r.

jbjr:

Thanks, that SUMA looks very promising and easy. I ran the recommended
connectivity test:

suma -x -a Action=Preview -a RqType=Latest

but it failed with:

0500-013 Failed to retrieve list from fix server

I guess my server cannot access the internet - can ftp from external
sites though - must be an http issue?? ...

jbjr wrote:[color=blue]
> MJB wrote:[color=green]
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I'm looking for some help/advice on patching AIX. We are in the
> > process of moving from Sun/Solaris to IBM/AIX. We have a few p5
> > servers running 5.3 and I want to make sure the OS stays up to date.
> > On Solaris you could just download the latest recommended patch cluster
> > from Sunsolve, unzip it and install it.
> >
> > How does it work with AIX? I've been to:
> >
> > [url]http://www-912.ibm.com/eserver/support/fixes/fcgui.jsp[/url]
> >
> > I plug in my system info and then have to select from:
> >
> > Technology Level
> > Service Pack
> > Maintenance Level
> > etc, etc
> >
> > I have no idea which one I need to download/install. Does AIX have a
> > 'recommended cluster' equivalent? If so am I looking in the right
> > place?
> >
> > Dare I inquire about the equivalent to Sun's OBP/firmware?
> >
> > Thanks[/color]
>
> Look into SUMA. I don't know how many machines you have to maintain or
> how you do your provisioning or what not. But we use SUMA on our 520s
> and it's great. Every night it downloads the latest patches. We have
> a set schedule. We install new patches in the applied state, test
> them, and just run them as applied until testing is complete and it is
> time to apply a new round of patches. Then we commit all and apply the
> new ones. That's an important step.
>
> So give smitty suma a look and see if it helps you out. You will have
> to do a little work to configure it, but nothing terribly
> sophisticated. The only information you should need with respect to
> maintenance levels etc. is your output from oslevel -r.[/color]

MJB wrote:[color=blue]
> jbjr:
>
> Thanks, that SUMA looks very promising and easy. I ran the recommended
> connectivity test:
>
> suma -x -a Action=Preview -a RqType=Latest
>
> but it failed with:
>
> 0500-013 Failed to retrieve list from fix server
>
> I guess my server cannot access the internet - can ftp from external
> sites though - must be an http issue?? ...
>
> jbjr wrote:[color=green]
> > MJB wrote:[color=darkred]
> > > Hi all,
> > >
> > > I'm looking for some help/advice on patching AIX. We are in the
> > > process of moving from Sun/Solaris to IBM/AIX. We have a few p5
> > > servers running 5.3 and I want to make sure the OS stays up to date.
> > > On Solaris you could just download the latest recommended patch cluster
> > > from Sunsolve, unzip it and install it.
> > >
> > > How does it work with AIX? I've been to:
> > >
> > > [url]http://www-912.ibm.com/eserver/support/fixes/fcgui.jsp[/url]
> > >
> > > I plug in my system info and then have to select from:
> > >
> > > Technology Level
> > > Service Pack
> > > Maintenance Level
> > > etc, etc
> > >
> > > I have no idea which one I need to download/install. Does AIX have a
> > > 'recommended cluster' equivalent? If so am I looking in the right
> > > place?
> > >
> > > Dare I inquire about the equivalent to Sun's OBP/firmware?
> > >
> > > Thanks[/color]
> >
> > Look into SUMA. I don't know how many machines you have to maintain or
> > how you do your provisioning or what not. But we use SUMA on our 520s
> > and it's great. Every night it downloads the latest patches. We have
> > a set schedule. We install new patches in the applied state, test
> > them, and just run them as applied until testing is complete and it is
> > time to apply a new round of patches. Then we commit all and apply the
> > new ones. That's an important step.
> >
> > So give smitty suma a look and see if it helps you out. You will have
> > to do a little work to configure it, but nothing terribly
> > sophisticated. The only information you should need with respect to
> > maintenance levels etc. is your output from oslevel -r.[/color][/color]

You may need to use the -c option to suma to add a HTTP_PROXY if you
use one. man suma gives good details on this.