Re: Patches vs. Packages

[Tim Nelson]

On Fri, 18 Mar 2005, Chip Seraphine wrote:

[Re: Package management and Patch management having the same actions]
> I started out with that approach on our Suns, but quickly abandoned it.  I 
> think that, generally speaking, it really depends on the patch/package 
> management scheme.  I now have two different scripts for doing this sort of 
> thing, although both are managed by cfagent.

	I guess I'm wondering whether the cfengine "packages" clause would 
be an appropriate way of managing patches, as well as managing packages. 
So to my mind, you'd have two sets of scripts, but the packages section 
could call either.

> Part of the issue was that figuring out dependencies for Solaris patches is 
> extremely different than doing the same for packages.    Another part of it 
> was practical considerations, such as reboot requirements.

        Does what I said above make this paragraph irrelevant?


David Masterton wrote:
> Patches seem to come in two flavors:
>
> 1. Packaged patches -- some vendors roll up (sets of) patches into a 
> package that the package manager can deal with.

        Ok, that fits in to my model then :).

> 2. Simple patches -- (sets of) files that a vendor deems has to get out 
> now for some bug -- the vendor may or may not have time to "package"-ize 
> it, but will merely document it.
>
> Obviously, therefore, the form of patches can be as varied as packages (or 
> even more than!).  Every vendor has his own favorite ways -- from simple 
> tarballs of files to shell/Perl scripts to real packages.

	Then, by definition, there is no way to automate these, right?  So 
they'd have to be managed manually from something like cfengine.

        :)

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