Comments on: Solaris 10 patch return codes

By: Rob

Rob — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 20:21:13 +0000

Is there an exact url for this path check advanced? Thanks!

By: s

Fri, 29 May 2009 21:03:11 +0000

For patching goodness check out PCA – “patch check advanced” it is simply a perl script by a dude, but ohmygod it rules compared to the built in sun tools.

By: Gleb Reys

Gleb Reys — Thu, 28 May 2009 20:06:06 +0000

Hi Colin,

Thanks for leaving a comment! You’re quite right about the rule of thumb: if it’s 0, things are green, if it’s anything else – watch out. I always end up checking the install logs, sometimes for each patch, just to make sure the patching is successful.

By: Colin

Colin — Thu, 28 May 2009 12:15:08 +0000

Be careful with this list: the exit codes were never officially documented (and thus never really supported) so Sun is at liberty to change these at will, without notification.

In fact this is indeed the case with Solaris 10′s new patching mechanism that was introduced when zones were introduced. The only reliable exit codes are 0 and >0 (see the patchadd(1M) man page) and you’ll find the exit codes very rarely actually match this list unless you use the -t option to patchadd.

Note, the -t option is NOT compatible with zones.

Like with any application with undocumented exit codes, your only option is to check for 0 and if it’s not 0, read the log/output to determine why it failed.