Patching Solaris 10 with zones

Sun now requires all Solaris 10 updates to go through the Update Manager. However, note the following blurb:

The Sun Update Connection cannot currently be used on systems
configured with Zones. This is a result of changes to the
low-level Solaris patch utility, patchadd, that rendered it
incompatible with the Sun Update Connection client software.
Updates for these systems must be obtained from SunSolve and
applied using patchadd.

Oops. Zones are by far the killer feature in Solaris 10.

Sun's argument is that because patchadd changed the result code that it is impossible to script it? How exactly did this change get through the ARC? Were they sleeping that day?

In the Update Connection support forum, they've been promising that a fix will come real soon now - I'm beginning to think they just don't care to fix it and produced this lame excuse.

Luckily, it's not terribly hard to script the patching process with zones installed.

Caveat emptor.

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