SUMMARY (Automating DU patch installs)

From: Nancy Davis <nedavis_at_betafo.gsfc.nasa.gov>
Date: Tue, 28 Sep 1999 10:47:53 -0400 (EDT)

RE: Remote patch installation on Digital Unix 4.0x

Apparently this can be done quite elegantly using RIS.
Mike Iglesias from UCI has details on how he implemented
RIS to run remote patches...

Our situation here is a bit different, however. We have
several machines and each one must have different kernel options.
So we cannot just blanketly clone kernels, one machine
to the next. Also, we do not have the licenses for RIS....
One person mentioned that RIS will not work over a WAN.
So if you have a very large spread of machines to patch,
RIS is not your answer either....

Originally I wanted to select individual patches from the
DU patch_kit and install only those I was concerned with
thinking I could prevent problems with third party software
by controlling which library files I allowed to change
but after digging through the dupatch scripts
and the associated .scp scripts, I decided this was not
a good idea. There are just too any interdependencies and
I found I was forced to rely on dupatch and install the
big patch kit as a whole.

I am still playing with my original idea of force feeding
a script into rc0.d and invoking init s. So far this works,
patches install and I can script a kernel rebuild,
but not without user intervention at the console...(two
carriage returns required....still looking into
what editing changes I can get away with in inittab...)
This also requires me to temporarily change the rc0.d
directory to allow nfs (we only have a few machines with
enough local disk space to hold the patch kit uncompressed)
but that too, can be scripted.

Thanks to:

Kjell Andresen Univ. of Oslo
Joel Gallun (dc-sage list), tux.org
Mike Iglesias Univ. Calif, Irvine
John P. Speno



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|Nancy E. Davis Email: nedavis_at_milkyway.gsfc.nasa.gov|
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Received on Tue Sep 28 1999 - 14:50:32 NZST

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