Another quick tip for fellow Testers trying to get to grips with Sun Solaris.

Forget the various patch managers available from Sun (smpatch, Sun Update Connection etc) - from experience they are oft prone to failure for the most inexplicable reasons. Instead what I needed (and found) was a simple to install, simple to use patch manager in order that I can keep the Sun Solaris boxes in the Test Lab up and running:

www.par.univie.ac.at/solaris/pca/

"Patch Check Advanced"

A simple "./pca.sh -i" once a day keeps the Sun boxes up to date. It really has made managing the Unix workstations and servers a lot easier in the lab.

Oh - the instructions mention you need wget. If it's not on your system you can get it from:

www.sunfreeware.com

1. Download the version of wget for your Solaris version (make sure you get the package and not the source) to your Sun box;
2. then gunzip .gz;
3. then su to root (or other user with permissions to add packages);
4. then do "patchadd -d ".

Eh voila!