HPlogo HP e3000 MPE/iX System Software Maintenance Manual (Release C.75.00) > Appendix F HP Patch/iX Reference

HP Patch/iX Main Menu

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The HP Patch/iX Main menu displays the following list of available activities:
Select Activities

lists the type of patching options you can apply to your system using HP Patch/iX.

View Patches

displays lists of patches. There are several filters defined that allow you to view selected patches.

Qualify Patches

Evaluates the submitted patches for compatibility with your system.

Create [Tape]

creates either a CSLT or a STORE tape of the patches and add-on products, (if applicable) that you are applying to your system.

Create [Stage] [Tape]

creates a staging area for the patches you are applying to your system. This item is only available if Stage/iX is initialized.

Exit HP Patch/iX

exits you from HP Patch/iX, if you are in mid-process.

If Stage/iX is initialized, the HP Patch/iX Main menu replaces Create [Tape] with the Stage/iX option Create [Stage] [Tape].

Selecting Activities

The Select Activities menu allows you to select the type of patching activity you are planning to perform, and prepares the system for the patch management activity you selected. These are the options:

  • Adding a PowerPatch

  • Adding a Reactive patch

  • Adding (SUBSYS) products

Adding a PowerPatch

Select Adding a PowerPatch if you have a PowerPatch tape to apply to your system. PowerPatch tapes contain a bundle of general release patches for a specific operating system version. Using HP Patch/iX to apply PowerPatch patches allows you to:

  • Accept and apply a default list of patches that Hewlett-Packard determines are appropriate for your system.

  • Add or remove selected patches from the default list of patches and apply these patches to your system.

Adding Reactive Patches

Select Adding Reactive Patches if the Hewlett-Packard Response Center has transmitted to you case specific patches. These patches may have been ordered in response to a problem, or may be installed to avoid a problem that you or the Response Center have determined has the potential of being experienced in the future.

Adding (SUBSYS) Products

Select Adding (SUBSYS) Products if you have a SUBSYS product tape that was shipped with your PowerPatch tape. SUBSYS products are subsystem products that you specifically order. This option can be used only when a new product is being added to the system at the same time a PowerPatch is applied. Applying SUBSYS products to your system is known as the Add-On process. When you select this option, HP Patch/iX restores product information from the SUBSYS tape that will be used in patch qualification.

If you are adding-on SUBSYS products with a PowerPatch, you can apply Reactive patches at the same time. You cannot add-on SUBSYS products and Reactive patches together without a PowerPatch.

If you are adding SUBSYS products, you cannot stage the modification. When this item is selected, the Main menu replaces the Create [Stage] [Tape] option with the Create [Tape] option.

Customizing Patch Preparation

When you select a patching activity, the default is to perform preparation operations for that patching activity. You can instead customize patch preparation. When you customize patch preparation, you are overriding the Hewlett-Packard recommended operations, unless you have downloaded patches from the HP SupportLine web site.

If you downloaded patch files, you must deselect both "Purge all files in the PATCHXL.SYS group" and "Restore files from Reactive patch tape." Also if you downloaded files from the web site, confirm that you have the following files in the INSTALL.SYS group: 

  PATCHIX, PATCH000, ABLDINTX, ALKEDCAT, ALKEDHLP, AUTOCM,
  AUTOLED, AUTOSPTH.
If the patch files are not in the PATCHXL.SYS group, or the A-files are not in the INSTALL.SYS group, Patch/iX will not allow you to unmark the item, "Restore files from Reactive patch tape."

In the customized patch preparation activity, the possible patch preparation operations are the following:

  • Purge unneeded files in INSTALL.SYS group.

    HP Patch/iX purges all unnecessary files found in the INSTALL.SYS group. These files are typically left over from a previous patch installation and can cause HP Patch/iX, AUTOINST, or HPINSTAL to fail.

    This operation is recommended for the PowerPatch, Reactive Patch, and Add-on activities.

  • Purge all files in PATCHXL.SYS group.

    HP Patch/iX purges all files in the PATCHXL.SYS group. These are typically, files that are left over from a previous patching process. This operation is recommended for Reactive Patches unless you downloaded files from HP SupportLine.

    Unmark this item if you have intentionally placed new patch files in the PATCHXL.SYS group.

  • Purge all files in USL.SYS, UXL.SYS, or UNL.SYS groups.

    HP Patch/iX purges all files found in the groups as selected. These files are typically left over from a previous product installation and can cause either HP Patch/iX or AUTOINST to fail.

    This is recommended for the Add-on activity.

  • Restore files from reactive patch tape.

    HP Patch/iX restores the patch files from the mounted tape and copies them into the patchxl.sys group.

    Unmark this item if you have downloaded Reactive patch files to the PATCHXL.SYS group.

  • Restore Product (SUBSYS) information files

    HP Patch/iX restores a file that lists the ordered products that are on the mounted tape. When used with information files delivered on the PowerPatch tape, HP Patch/iX will be able to qualify patches for those products without forcing you to first install them on the system.

    HP Patch/iX also restores library components from the tape. These are incorporated into the new libraries that are created by HP Patch/iX.

    This operation is recommended for the Add-on activity.

  • Restore PowerPatch information files.

    HP Patch/iX restores the information files from the PowerPatch tape into the INSTALL.SYS group. These files are used to qualify patches for your system, and provide you with information about the patches that are on the Powerpatch tape. The actual patch files will be restored during Create [Stage][Tape]/Create [Tape] activity when HP Patch/iX has determined the subset that are applicable to your system. This saves time and disk space since the PowerPatch tape could potentially contain many megabytes of files that are not needed for your system.

    This operation is recommended for the PowerPatch activity.

  • Copy System Libraries.

    HP Patch/iX copies the three MPE/iX system library files (sl.pub.sys, xl.pub.sys, and nl.pub.sys) into the INSTALL.SYS group.

    This operation is recommended for the PowerPatch, Reactive Patch, and Add-on activities.

Viewing Patches

When you select View Patches from the Main menu, the View Patches screen lists the following depending on the filter selected:

  • All the patches that have been installed on your system using HP Patch/iX. This option allows you to view information about the patches that have previously been installed on the system. You can quickly determine if a patch has already been installed on your system.

  • All the patches that are available for installation using this patch process. This option displays only if you have completed the Select Activities portion of the patch process.

  • Available SUBSYS products. If you are performing an add-on task, we recommend that you view the list of available products to confirm that you received what you ordered.

The list of patches displayed in the View Patches screen varies depending upon the filter selected for the viewer. The default View Patches filter displays Installed Patches. The current filter is displayed at the top right corner of the View Patches window.

View Patches Filters

There are three View Patches filter options:
Installed Patches (1)

patches already on the system.

Available Patches (2)

patches on the PowerPatch or Reactive patch tapes. From this filter you can view detailed information about each patch.

Available Products (3)

products on the SUBSYS tape.

Qualifying Patches

The Qualify Patches option provides three functions:

  • Automatically reviews the available patches and determines which patches are compatible with your system.

  • Allows you to force or veto individual patches. Forcing a patch tells HP Patch/iX to include (add) the selected patch in the patch installation. Vetoing a patch tells HP Patch/iX to not include (remove) the selected patch from the set of patches to be installed.

  • Establishes the list of patches that will be included in creating the patch installation tape (CSLT or store tape).

This part of the process is where you choose which patches you want to install. HP Patch/iX evaluates all the proposed patches and determines if each patch qualifies for installation. A patch qualifies for installation if:

  • It is compatible with your current software.

  • All patch and product dependencies are resident.

  • You do not have a more recent version of the patch already installed on your system.

CAUTION: Forcing a patch that does not automatically qualify for your system is strongly discouraged by Hewlett-Packard. Force patches only under the recommendation of the Hewlett-Packard Response Center.

Qualified Patch Filters

To view selected lists of patches there are six filter settings available:
All (1)

Displays all patches available for the current patch process.

Qualified (2)

Displays all patches that qualify for the system.

Disqualified (3)

Displays all patches that failed to qualify for the system.

Difference (4)

Displays the difference in the list of qualified patches between the two most recent qualifications.

Vetoed (5)

Displays all patches marked for veto from the default qualification. They are marked with V.

Forced (6)

Displays all patches marked for force from the default qualification. They are marked with F.

To change the View Patches filter, press [F5] Previous Filter or [F6] Next Filter (or press the number on the keyboard that corresponds to the filter view). HP Patch/iX toggles through the View Patches filter options and displays the selected list of patches.

Qualified Patch Detailed Views

From any of the filter options, you can view detailed information about each patch. These are the types of detailed views:

  • Summary (1)

  • General Release (GR) Text (2)

  • Special Instructions (SI) Text (3)

  • Product Numbers (4)

  • Known Problem Report (KPR) Numbers (5)

  • Patch Supersedes (6)

  • Patch Components (7)

  • Patch Dependencies (8)

To view detailed patch information.

  1. From the Qualified Patches screen, highlight a patch and press [Return].

    The Patch Detail Summary screen displays.

  2. Press [F5] Previous View or [F6] Next View.

    HP Patch/iX toggles through the View Patch Detail options and displays detailed information about the selected patch.

  3. Press [F2] Previous Patch or [F3] Next Patch.

    HP Patch/iX scrolls through the list of patches in the Qualified Patches screen and displays detailed information about the selected patch.

  4. To return to the Main menu, press [F8] until the Main menu displays.

View (1) — Summary

The Summary view lists evaluation information about the selected patch.

Qualification Status — indicates why the patch qualifies or not.

Patch Installation Status — indicates whether the patch is installed already or not.

Patch Recommendation — indicates when a patch should be installed. An alphabetic code displays in the Flags column of the Qualify Patches screen. The code is expanded in the Detailed Summary view.

The Summary Detailed View Patch Recommendation Codes are:
A

FOS patch that is recommended for installation on all systems.

B

FOS patch that is recommended for installation if appropriate. There are special circumstances that are described in the General Release text.

C

FOS enhancements with hardware dependencies.

D

FOS enhancements with software dependencies.

E

Product (Subsystem) patch that should be applied if the product is installed.

F

Product (Subsystem) patch that should be applied if the product is installed and if appropriate. There are special circumstances that are describe in the General Release text.

G

Product (Subsystem) enhancement released as a patch.

The following three codes are for non-GR patches:
H

Limited release patch.

I

Site-specific patch.

J

Other.

Installation Method — Indicates whether installation will be by CSLT or Store tape.

Patch Criticality — A numeric code displays in the Flags column of the Qualify Patches screen. The code is expanded in the Detailed Summary view.

The Summary Detailed View Patch Criticality Codes are:

  1. System may experience a system failure without this patch.

  2. System may experience deadlock or hang without this patch.

  3. Data loss or corruption may be experienced without this patch.

  4. Program abort may occur without this patch.

  5. Gradual loss of memory objects, virtual memory or other performance degradation may occur without this patch.

  6. Other, see the GR text information for a description.

blank Not a critical patch.

View (2) — General Release (GR) Text

Displays all of the General Release text that is available for the patch as shown in the following figure.

View (3) — Special Instructions (SI) Text

Displays any special instructions or configuration requirements that have been included for the patch.

View (4) — Product Number

Displays a list of products that are affected by the selected patch.

View (5) — Known Problem Report (KPR) Numbers

Displays a list of the KPR (Known Problem Report) numbers that are referenced by the patch. This is provided as cross reference information to determine what known problems are fixed by this patch. These are also known as Service Request (SR) numbers.

View (6) — Patch Supersedes

Displays the history of this patch. What patches it supersedes. All patches in the Supersedes tree of the current patch are included in the patch.

View (7) — Patch Components

Displays the files and procedures that are modified by this patch. See the following figure.

View (8) — Patch Dependencies

Often a patch will have some dependency on another patch being installed on the system to work correctly. HP Patch/iX handles dependencies automatically, by disqualifying patches when their dependencies are not present. If you force a patch on the system, all of its dependencies will also be forced onto the system.



Using HP Patch/iX

Creating a Patch Tape or Stage Tape