PCA -

Patch Check Advanced

Analyze, download and install patches for Oracle Solaris
Written by
Martin Paul

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Installation

PCA doesn't need any complicated compilation, installation or registration procedure, nor root permission. It's just one perl script.

  1. You need perl to run PCA. If you want to use any of PCA's download functions, you need wget (≥v1.8) with SSL/HTTPS support. Both are included in recent versions of Solaris.

  2. Download the script:

    and make it executable (chmod +x pca). Move it to a directory in your PATH.

    Alternatively, PCA is available as an SVR4 compliant package from OpenCSW (CSWpca, maintained by D. Michelsen).

  3. Patch reports can be created without any further requirements, but to download patches or patch READMEs from Oracle, a My Oracle Support (MOS) Account and an Oracle Support Contract are required. New users must register, connect the Support Contract to the account and provide the MOS Account data to PCA when it asks for it or use the user and passwd options to feed it to PCA.

  4. Run it: pca. There is no need to run PCA as root for basic usage.

  5. Documentation and release notes are included in the script; view it with pca --man. If you prefer documentation in man page format, get pca.8 and move it to a directory in your MANPATH.

If you are forced to use a proxy for web access, make sure that wget is configured to use it: Set http_proxy and https_proxy in /etc/wgetrc or $HOME/.wgetrc or use the wgetproxy option with PCA.

Firewall rules may need to be changed to permit outgoing access via HTTP/HTTPS to the following systems: *.oracle.com, *.edgesuite.net, *.akamai.net, *.llnwd.net, *.llnw.net. This long list is due to Oracle using a complicating redirection sequence and multiple alternative content distribution networks for fast downloads.

If you do not have wget installed on your system, download the current patch cross-reference file patchdiag.xref and move it to /var/tmp/ before running PCA.

Previous versions of PCA are available for download in the download area.