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From: John D Groenveld on 11 Feb 2010 11:33 In article <7tip6tFlueU1(a)mid.individual.net>, Chris Ridd <chrisridd(a)mac.com> wrote: >Hm. Does the word "Update" there refer to major Solaris updates (eg >Solaris 10 update 9) or patches? Patches. Solaris 10 October 2009 is an "update release": <URL:http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/releases.jsp> John groenveld(a)acm.org
From: David Kirkby on 11 Feb 2010 13:14 On Feb 11, 1:39 pm, Martin Paul <m...(a)par.univie.ac.at> wrote: > Get ready for some bad news: According to my sources there will be no > more free access to any Solaris patch, be it security or not. I think a failure to offer security fixes would be a major obstacle to making Solaris more popular. For companies on a tight budget, Linux would seem more attractive then. Any arguments by IT professionals that Solaris is a more stable system would be met with arguments like "yes, and when a major security flaw is found, you have to pay to have it fixed". Buy a cheap PC from Tesco (in the UK) and it comes with Microsoft Windows. All updates for that are free for life. I could buy a Windows PC with free updates for life for less than I could buy a Sun maintenance contract. Solaris has a small enough market share now. Making security fixes chargeable would decrease that. FWIW, I tried to download a kernel update, which is marked as recommended and security using pca last night. I was unable to do so, even though my Sunsolve account is tied to a contract. I then logged into Sunsolve directly with a browser, and was able to download it. For non-security fixes, then I can see why updates are chargeable. Dave
From: John D Groenveld on 11 Feb 2010 14:09 In article <c871baa8-653a-43c0-ab44-463cd9be7146(a)q16g2000yqq.googlegroups.com>, David Kirkby <drkirkby(a)gmail.com> wrote: >I think a failure to offer security fixes would be a major obstacle to >making Solaris more popular. For companies on a tight budget, Linux I think the Solaris marketing wonks see Indiana as the volume operating system for developers, content creators, early adopters and those who don't want to buy support contracts. >would seem more attractive then. Any arguments by IT professionals >that Solaris is a more stable system would be met with arguments like >"yes, and when a major security flaw is found, you have to pay to have >it fixed". I only have access to one Redhat Enterprise Linux installation and up2date is bound to an annual support subscription. Are RHEL security fixes available without a subscription or does one need to run Fedora? Or are you referring to a different Linux distributor? >FWIW, I tried to download a kernel update, which is marked as >recommended and security using pca last night. I was unable to do so, >even though my Sunsolve account is tied to a contract. I then logged >into Sunsolve directly with a browser, and was able to download it. You had to periodically run pca with --update=check as Sun would break the "wget" interfaces. $ ./pca --update=check No new version available $ ./pca --version pca 20091216-02 John groenveld(a)acm.org
From: Sami Ketola on 12 Feb 2010 03:19 David Kirkby <drkirkby(a)gmail.com> wrote: > FWIW, I tried to download a kernel update, which is marked as > recommended and security using pca last night. I was unable to do so, > even though my Sunsolve account is tied to a contract. I then logged > into Sunsolve directly with a browser, and was able to download it. Did you forget to enable wget patch access on your sunsolve account? Sami
From: Martin Paul on 12 Feb 2010 04:10
David Kirkby wrote: > FWIW, I tried to download a kernel update, which is marked as > recommended and security using pca last night. I was unable to do so, > even though my Sunsolve account is tied to a contract. I then logged > into Sunsolve directly with a browser, and was able to download it. As John says - often updating to the latest release of pca fixes download problems. As somebody else already mentioned on the thread, it might be necessary to accept the new Software License from Oracle to make hands-off downloads work again: http://www.mail-archive.com/pca(a)lists.univie.ac.at/msg01583.html On the other hand, a different problem showed up for me this morning: SunSolve has forgotten about my support contract, it's not listed on the "Update Account" subpage on sunsolve.sun.com anymore. Re-adding it doesn't work either, even though there's no error. I'm not alone with that: http://www.mail-archive.com/pca(a)lists.univie.ac.at/msg01612.html Martin. -- SysAdmin | Institute of Scientific Computing, University of Vienna PCA | Analyze, download and install patches for Solaris | http://www.par.univie.ac.at/solaris/pca/ |