17 January 2008

HP-UX: Patch naming convention

A patch name consists of the characters "PH" (Patch HP-UX), followed by a two-character type-identifier, followed by an underscore,
followed by a four or five-digit number.

The currently defined patch types are:

CO - COmmands & libraries
KL - KerneL
NE - NEtworking
SS - SubSystems

An example name of a Kernel patch name would be "PHKL_23507"

Kernel patches always require a system reboot, so that the newly updated kernel can be loaded. Many Networking patches (PHNE*) also
make modifications to the kernel, and hence require a reboot.

Note that the numerical portion of any given patch name is unique, among ALL patches.

So there would never be a patch named "PHCO_23507", in addition to a patch named "PHKL_23507." This lends itself nicely to
grepping for a particular patch (ie - to see if "PHKL_23507" is installed, one could use "swlist -l product | grep 23507"

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