jholly@cup.hp.com (Jim Hollenback) writes:

>camattern@acm.org wrote:

>: It is worth noting that as the number of sites grows it does get
>: increasingly difficult to ensure that the patches actually apply,
>: particularly the reboot ones in an environment with a very small
>: maintenance window that frequently is eclipsed by production jobs.
>: It's a bit like herding cats.

>with HP-UX you can combine all patches that require a reboot into one
>depot, apply all the patches from that depot and only have one reboot.
>You can put other patches in there as well and still only have one
>reboot.


Since it sounds like the OP is worrying about patches outside the normal
scheduled OS patch maintenance process requiring reboots, I don't think
its a big issue for HP-UX, AIX or Linux, since a critical security-related
patch requires a reboot only very rarely on Unix based systems, in
contrast to Windows.

The exception of course would be a critical fix in the form of a patch to
correct a problem you are encountering, like a kernel bug that is causing
a crash. But such fixes are (hopefully) far less frequent than the flood
of security advisories that come out these days!

--
Douglas Siebert dsiebert@excisethis.khamsin.net

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" -- Thomas Jefferson