Patches for Solaris are available here:
Sun Recommended and Security Patches
Even for old boxes, the patches are kept up to date and available. We have an old Enterprise 2 box that we run 2.5.1 on in our lab. For more info on this, see our Solaris articles. To show what patches are currently installed, use showrev -p | more. To install all recommended patches, use install_cluster. We used the -nosave option with install_cluster, since this is a lab machine, but you should be careful about this option. The warning about disk space is important to heed as well. On our default, fresh, install where we let the Solaris installer autopartition our drives, it did not leave enough room for the patches. We had to readjust our partition sizes manually. Mainly /export/home was much larger than it needed to be for a lab machine, and usr didn’t have enough room. Failure code 8 means “Attempting to patch a package that is not installed”. For more patch return codes see this page. Here is our patch session:
# showrev -p | more No patches are installed # ls 2.5.1_Recommended.tar.Z # uncompress *.Z # ls 2.5.1_Recommended.tar # tar -xf *.tar # ./install_cluster -nosave Patch cluster install script for Solaris 2.5.1 Recommended WARNING SYSTEMS WITH LIMITED DISK SPACE SHOULD NOT INSTALL PATCHES: With or without using the save option, the patch installation process will still require some amount of disk space for installation and administrative tasks in the /, /usr, /var, or /opt partitions where patches are typically installed. The exact amount of space will depend on the machine's architecture, software packages already installed, and the difference in the patched objects size. To be safe, it is not recommended that a patch cluster be installed on a system with less than 4 MBytes of available space in each of these partitions. Running out of disk space during installation may result in only partially loaded patches. Check and be sure adequate disk space is available before continuing. Are you ready to continue with install? [y/n]: y The nosave option was used. Objects will not be saved. Installing patches located in /export/home/u-1/2.5.1_Recommended Using patch_order file for patch installation sequence Installing 104578-05... Installing 111842-01... Installing 103891-08... Installation of 103670-08 failed. Return code 8. Installing 103630-15... Installing 103663-19... Installing 103558-16... Installation of 104178-04 failed. Return code 8. Installing 112891-01... Installing 105097-03... Installing 103603-16... . . . The following patches were not able to be installed: 103670-08 104735-02 105310-14 105324-04 105790-23 110109-02 110110-02 110111-02 108363-02 104178-04 For more installation messages refer to the installation logfile: /var/sadm/install_data/Solaris_2.5.1_Recommended_log Use '/usr/bin/showrev -p' to verify installed patch-ids. Refer to individual patch README files for more patch detail. Rebooting the system is usually necessary after installation. # # showrev -p Patch: 104578-05 Obsoletes: Packages: SUNWcsu Patch: 103891-08 Obsoletes: Packages: SUNWcsu Patch: 103630-15 Obsoletes: Packages: SUNWcsu, SUNWcsr Patch: 103663-19 Obsoletes: 103683-01 Packages: SUNWcsu, SUNWcsr, SUNWhea Patch: 103582-24 Obsoletes: Packages: SUNWcsu, SUNWcsr . . . Patch: 105344-01 Obsoletes: Packages: SUNWtoo Patch: 103900-01 Obsoletes: Packages: SUNWowbcp Patch: 105251-01 Obsoletes: Packages: SUNWowbcp Patch: 105789-08 Obsoletes: 103796-19 Packages: SUNWvlxil Patch: 103801-07 Obsoletes: Packages: SUNWsprot, SUNWxcu4t |
Another useful site we ran across that has updated Free Software for all kinds of different Solaris platforms, including our old box, is Freeware for Solaris.
