“Sun Microsystems Inc. is hoping to lift up its operating system where competitors have slipped, through automated software and security patch uploading. Among the new features planned for Solaris 9, due at the end of the month, is Patch Manager, an analysis engine that automates the process of locating required security and software patches for a target system, said officials of the Palo Alto, Calif., company. Also on tap is Solaris Product Registry, a mechanism that maintains a record of the software installed, modified or removed through the life cycle of a system.” Read the the report at ExtremeTech.
Solaris 9 to Ease Patch Uploads
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So they finally ported apt, is that it?
Like apt-get for Debian? or up2date for RedHat? or Software Update for Mandrake? or perhaps the ports system for the BSD’s?
“So they finally ported apt, is that it?”
LOL
Have you ever patched a Solaris system? Based on your comments, you probably haven’t. Applying patches to Solaris is infinitely easier than applying patches to any Linux distribution I have ever worked with. Backing out a patch is also infiniitely easier. Solaris’s patch tracking and management system is far better than anything I have ever woekd with in Linux.
I’m running Solaris 9 beta at home. It’s been recompiled with the new Forte compilers. As such, everything is noticably faster, even the boot process. The Patch manager is a really cool feature that will make patching Solaris even easier. A lot of people in the *Linux* camp have not really used Solaris, which is a shame. Installing and removing software/patches is EXTREMELY easy in Solaris. It has a very intelligent way of installing patches for software and the kernel. And speaking of the kernel.. in Solaris you don’t rebuild your kernel.. it’s all dynamic and self tuning. You can add and remove components without rebooting. On the higher end servers from Sun, you can install lots of processors (E15K can go upto 106 on the fly). Also on the higher end servers( even the old E6500’s ) you can add/remove hardware components on the fly, the kernel will pick up the changes. And here is another great feature.. Live Update… update to the newest version of Solaris without taking the system down until you are ready to reboot with the new kernel. Try doing all of this with Linux:)
The apt-get and the BSD ports stuff is different, they have nothing to do with patching. They are great for what they do, but aren’t something you’d see in a commercial Unix.