SUMMARY:os upgrade; what happens to patches ?

From: Brian James O'Connor <boc_at_ironbark.bendigo.latrobe.edu.au>
Date: Wed, 22 Jan 1997 09:45:14 +1100 (EST)

My question was;

>
> Hi,
> I have applied 15-16 patches to our DU 3.2b system.
> We are upgrading to 3.2g, what happens to the patches if we
> go down the update, rather than full installation, path?

It seems the answer is "it depends"; Kurt Carlson's advice
is to check to see if the patches have been incorporated in the
new release, if they haven't then you will probably need to
"un-apply" those patches.

I checked in DOCUMENTATION/TEXT/*_Fixes.txt files on
the 3.2g cd for mention of 3.2b patches, but couldn't find any.

All the 3.2b patches that I have have an ID starting with
OSF325, the *_Fixes.txt files only mentioned OSF320, OSF350(3.2C)
OSF360(3.2D-1), and OSF365(3.2D-2). Then after further reading
I found that OSF320 refered to 3.2, 3.2a and 3.2b, this is
ridiculous, I had to go searching through the problem descriptions
to try and match up patches. Surely a patch id should be constant,
and unique :[ .

The situation seems to be; if you want to be certain, remove all
the patches, upgrade and then install the consolidated patches for
the new version.(or do a full os install rather than an upgrade)

HOWEVER if you don't have custom patches, and you don't have
a patch that is newer than the version you are upgrading to,
(ie the ping patch)you will probably be ok.

the reponses:-

------------------------------------------------------------

>From sxkac_at_java.sois.alaska.edu Tue Jan 21 15:34:42 1997

> I have applied 15-16 patches to our DU 3.2b system.
>We are upgrading to 3.2g, what happens to the patches if we
>go down the update, rather than full installation, path?

I think (?) you may have to pass through v3.2c on the way
to v3.2g from v3.2b.

<yes, thats right the 3.2g cd comes with a copy of 3.2c(boc)>

The likely response from Digital is you must unapply them,
but that really isn't necessary in many cases.
Check to see if the patches were incorporated in 3.2c|3.2g.
If they are, you're ok. If they are not, you should un-apply
them and check with Digital if there's a newer version for
v3.2g.

As an example, we had 40+ patches applied on v3.2d-1, other
than two custom patches all had been incorporated in v3.2g.
The custom patches needed re-working for v3.2g, one had to
be unapplied or the kernel wouldn't build (the other was
wiped out anyway by a different update in v3.2g). kurt

_____________________________________________________________________
Kurt Carlson, University of Alaska SOIS/TS, (907)474-6266
sxkac_at_alaska.edu 910 Yukon Drive #105.63, Fairbanks, AK 99775-6200



------------------------------------------------------------
>From paulo_at_gateway.dexel.co.za Tue Jan 21 18:23:26 1997

Hi Brian,

Digitals Policy on this seems to be a little vague. What they say is
if you have installed patches on your system and you want to upgrade,
you should first undo/reverse all the patches you have installed. In
other words restore the original object and binary files that were
installed with the system.

Unless you kept very accurate records of
what you have done (and backups of the original prepatch files that
were overwritten) then you have a problem. But I must admit I have
done upgrades on systems with patches already installed and I
encountered no problems(maybe it depends on the patch installed)

This could be another attempt from Digital to protect themselves!

Good Luck, if you find anything else out let me know or Summarize and
Post to the list.

See ya
Paulo

------------------------------------------------------------
>From webster_at_ssdpdc.mdc.com Tue Jan 21 13:37:44 1997

Brian,

> I have applied 15-16 patches to our DU 3.2b system.
> We are upgrading to 3.2g, what happens to the patches if we
> go down the update, rather than full installation, path?

There are a couple of schools of thought here. The purist
would tell you that to ensure a clean upgrade, you should
remove all of the patches you have applied. The pragmatist
would tell you that if the patches had been incorporated,
the patched code will be over written as part of the upgrade.

I tend toward the latter approach, but there is a few gotcha.
You can have problems if you have applied patches that are
newer than the version of the operating system that you are
upgrading to. In these cases, the patch code may reference
or rely upon code that changes in the upgrade. You only
really see this in corrective action patches that solve
majr problems, like the ping and leap-year patches, where
new patches are provided for otherwise unsupported (by new
patches) versions of the operating system.

So, if you have installed the ping patch, you maywant to
de-install it to be safe before upgrading, and then install
the 3.2g version of the patch. You will also want to find
the consolodated patch kit for 3.2g as there are a number of
patches for this version of DU. Consult your DEC tech support
rep for information on getting the patch kit for 3.2g.

Tom
--
+--------------------------------+------------------------------+
| Tom Webster                    | "Funny, I've never seen it   |
| SysAdmin MDA-SSD ISS-IS-HB-S&O | do THAT before...."          |
| webster_at_ssdpdc.mdc.com         | - Any user support person    |
+--------------------------------+------------------------------+
|   Unless clearly stated otherwise, all opinions are my own.   |
+---------------------------------------------------------------+
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Thanks to all who replied.
boc
-- 
------------------------------------------------------------
        Brian O'Connor, Unix Systems Consultant
              Latrobe University,Bendigo
          boc_at_ironbark.bendigo.latrobe.edu.au
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Received on Wed Jan 22 1997 - 00:04:44 NZDT

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