Stricter Solaris patch entitlement
Martin Paul
be rolled out by Sun starting this week:
http://blogs.sun.com/patch/date/20090105
So what does that mean for pca users?
If you use pca to generate patch reports only, but not to download and
install patches, nothing changes.
If you have a support contract connected to the Sun Online Account used
with pca to download patches, nothing changes.
If you do not have a support contract - you are using a free Sun Online
Account - you already experienced that you could only download a subset
of patches with pca. This subset has now been reduced to a much smaller
number of patches, still containing at least all security patches.
At present, you can download any revision of a patch as long it contains
at least one security fix. In a second phase of policy enforcement (to
be done at a later time) only the revisions which actually contain
security fixes will be available for free. Example: Patch 123456-01
contains a security fix. Later, 123456-02 is published, containing a
non-security fix. You will be able to download 123456-01, but not 123456-02.
The patchdiag.xref file currently only contains information about the
most current revision of each patch. For pca to determine the set of
missing security patch revisions, it would be necessary to have
information about the last security revision of each patch as well.
There are no plans for Sun to add this information to the patchdiag.xref
file. You will have to check all Sun Alerts or patch READMEs to come up
with a list of all free security patch revisions.
Of course Sun has limited resources and is concentrating them on
customers with support contracts. I currently have no idea whether the
majority of the pca users do have support contracts or not. So if you
are affected by the planned changes, this is your chance to make
yourself heard. Feel free to comment either via the "Comments" link in
the above blog entry or on the pca mailing list.
Regards,
Martin.
--
SysAdmin | Institute of Scientific Computing, University of Vienna
PCA | Analyze, download and install patches for Solaris
| http://www.par.univie.ac.at/solaris/pca/
Thomas Tornblom
affected by this :-)
Tim Bradshaw
are affected by the planned changes,
>
>
Is a subscription really so expensive? I spend far more money on
other hobbies than I do on my Solaris subscription. Or is it just
that you think it is wrong to pay money for software support on
principle?
Richard B. Gilbert
I'm also a hobbyist. $240/year (I think that's what it costs) can be a
pretty big bite in this economy. There was a time when I would have
just forked over the cash but now. . . . I don't NEED support. If it
breaks I can live without it or wait for the next new version.
If I were using Solaris in some business critical application, I'd pay
$240/year, or even more, without question!
Paul Floyd
Make that $US324 for a Basic Service Plan. I think that $US240 was the
price last year (and that it was around $US100 two years ago). For that
you get installation support, access to patches and a few restricted web
sites.
A bientot
Paul
--
Paul Floyd http://paulf.free.fr
Thomas Maier-Komor
and if you live over here in Germany, you can replace the $ tag with a
Euro tag, which makes it a factor of almost 1.4 at the current exchange
rate. So this is $450 per year...
Back at the time, when I was spending money as a student for getting
Linux distributions, I spend about 50-100 DEM per year, which is about
$20 to $40, but that was before Y2k. That was just the CDs, without any
online support. I think there really should be a subscription that
enables one to get just the patches for let's say 100-120 Euro (~150$).
But I think Sun is really wanting all hobbyist to use SXCE or OS to get
more test coverage.
So, in theory, one could upgrade every release as a substitute for
patches. Unfortunately, not all releases are of equal quality, and
upgrade does not always work perfectly. At least nis/server is always
disabled after upgrade and some files get overwritten. So overall not
really a perfect situation for a machine which is not only for testing.
Finally, OS is still only available for x86/x64. But sparc support
should be coming in April. Maybe, I'll evaluate switching to OS then...
Cheers,
Thomas
Richard B. Gilbert
What do you mean?!?!
I have Solaris 8, Solaris 9, and Solaris 10 running on three different
SPARC machines (Ultra 10 Workstations). The O/S has been available for
SPARC for MANY YEARS!!
I have also run Solaris 2.6, Solaris 8, and Solaris 9 on the X86
platform. I haven't run Solaris 10 on X86 but it's available if you
want it!
Paul Gress
He's talking about OpenSolaris (OS), which is not available on the Sparc
platform yet.
hume.sp...@bofh.ca
Ian Collins
>
> As a *professional* user of Sun software and hardware, I don't care, because we
> don't use pca anyway.
Then what do you use?
Surely not that awful update manager?
--
Ian Collins
Thomas Maier-Komor
Paul and hume.sp...@bofh.ca are right.
Sorry for the confusion - OS as in OpenSolaris. SXCE as Solaris Express
Community Edition.
- Thomas
Matt McLeod
> Huge wrote:
>>
>> As a *professional* user of Sun software and hardware, I don't care, because we
>> don't use pca anyway.
>
> Then what do you use?
Nothing, because you can never get the downtime past management?
(Only half-joking here, but when I can patch I use pca.)
--
* Matt McLeod | mail: ma...@boggle.org | blog: http://abortrephrase.com/ *
--- People can do the work, so machines have time to think ---
Richard B. Gilbert
> Richard B. Gilbert <rgilb...@comcast.net> wrote:
>> I have Solaris 8, Solaris 9, and Solaris 10 running on three different
>> SPARC machines (Ultra 10 Workstations). The O/S has been available for
>> SPARC for MANY YEARS!!
>
> I think he means "OS" as in "OpenSolaris".
>
Given the high probability of being misunderstood, perhaps it would be
better to "spell it out"!
Richard B. Gilbert
OF COURSE THEY DO!!! "Professionals" do things the hard way and charge
extra! Besides, it's "supported" by Sun.
Dick Hoogendijk
> On Jan 8, 12:06 pm, Huge <H...@nowhere.much.invalid> wrote:
> are affected by the planned changes,
>>
>> As a hobbyist user of Sun software and hardware, I'm off...
>>
> Is a subscription really so expensive?
It's > 350 dollars PER YEAR. So for five years use of i.e. solaris 10
I'll pay $ 1750,- And I don't need support! I just need the patches for
an up2date system. Yes, that IS too much.
--
Dick Hoogendijk -- PGP/GnuPG key: 01D2433D
+http://nagual.nl/ | SunOS 10u6 10/08 ZFS+
ITguy
>
> It's > 350 dollars PER YEAR. So for five years use of i.e. solaris 10
> I'll pay $ 1750,- And I don't need support! I just need the patches for
> an up2date system. Yes, that IS too much.
I have to agree that the base service plan is more than some people
require. It would seem logical to offer a very low cost, say $50-$100/
year, subscription for updates only. That said, for hobbyists and non-
production deployments the SXCE releases have much more to offer than
Solaris10. With SXCE on ZFS root, I've gotten in the habit of running
live upgrade to the current release every few months. It's almost too
easy...
Nomen Publicus
> quoting Tim Bradshaw (Thu, 8 Jan 2009 12:49:47 -0800 (PST)):
>> On Jan 8, 12:06 pm, Huge <H...@nowhere.much.invalid> wrote:
>> are affected by the planned changes,
>>>
>>> As a hobbyist user of Sun software and hardware, I'm off...
>>>
>> Is a subscription really so expensive?
>
> It's > 350 dollars PER YEAR. So for five years use of i.e. solaris 10
> I'll pay $ 1750,- And I don't need support! I just need the patches for
> an up2date system. Yes, that IS too much.
>
You still get the security and OS stability patches for free. Are you
finding so many bugs that your work cannot continue while you wait for the
next free release of the OS?
--
Atheism: Godless, not believing in the existence of gods.
Ian Collins
>>> Is a subscription really so expensive?
>> It's > 350 dollars PER YEAR. So for five years use of i.e. solaris 10
>> I'll pay $ 1750,- And I don't need support! I just need the patches for
>> an up2date system. Yes, that IS too much.
>
> I have to agree that the base service plan is more than some people
> require. It would seem logical to offer a very low cost, say $50-$100/
> year, subscription for updates only.
The reason give in another forum was Sun were loosing revenue to third
parties using low cost subscriptions to access patches in order to sell
"support" packages to customers based on Sun's work.
--
Ian Collins
Richard B. Gilbert
> quoting Tim Bradshaw (Thu, 8 Jan 2009 12:49:47 -0800 (PST)):
>> On Jan 8, 12:06 pm, Huge <H...@nowhere.much.invalid> wrote:
>> are affected by the planned changes,
>>> As a hobbyist user of Sun software and hardware, I'm off...
>>>
>> Is a subscription really so expensive?
>
> It's > 350 dollars PER YEAR. So for five years use of i.e. solaris 10
> I'll pay $ 1750,- And I don't need support! I just need the patches for
> an up2date system. Yes, that IS too much.
>
SOME of the patches; e.g. security patches, are available even if you
have not purchased a support contract. For other patches, your choices
are to pay, or to live with the problems until the next minor release of
Solars!
I'm running mostly unpatched versions of Solaris 8, 9, and 10 on three
different Ultra 10 workstations. I'm not terribly concerned with
security, my network is not accessible from outside my home and security
inside is not a problem for me; my wife has the root password but does
not use the systems for anything. I also have root access. There is no
one else. The systems have done everything I have asked them to. What
more can a man want?
Not everyone can work as I do. Others almost certainly have security
requirements and availability requirements that must be satisfied.
Hopefully these others have a budget adequate to purchase a level of
support sufficient to obtain patches.
Remember that the software is FREE so you are already getting more than
you pay for!
Dick Hoogendijk
> Dick Hoogendijk wrote:
>> quoting Tim Bradshaw (Thu, 8 Jan 2009 12:49:47 -0800 (PST)):
>>> On Jan 8, 12:06 pm, Huge <H...@nowhere.much.invalid> wrote:
>>> are affected by the planned changes,
>>>> As a hobbyist user of Sun software and hardware, I'm off...
>>>>
>>> Is a subscription really so expensive?
>>
>> It's > 350 dollars PER YEAR. So for five years use of i.e. solaris 10
>> I'll pay $ 1750,- And I don't need support! I just need the patches for
>> an up2date system. Yes, that IS too much.
> Remember that the software is FREE so you are already getting more
> than you pay for!
Yes I know that. If I but a windows license I can use the software for a
few years and get patches for free. All in all this is much cheaper. All
I'm saying is that $ 350,- PER YEAR is too much for patches, even if the
software is free. $ 350,- for the OS and three years free patches would
be more normal. But as I understood we're the victims of villains who
abused a cheap patch contract. So I'll live with it. Solaris rocks.
Richard B. Gilbert
If Solaris were as widely distributed and used as Windows, patches might
be a little cheaper. Unfortunately, it's not, nor is it likely to be.
Most people find Windows a hell of a lot easier to use than Solaris!
The fact that Solaris can do a lot of things either better or more
easily than Windows doesn't count for much with the Windows users.
Casper H.S. Dik
>If Solaris were as widely distributed and used as Windows, patches might
>be a little cheaper. Unfortunately, it's not, nor is it likely to be.
>Most people find Windows a hell of a lot easier to use than Solaris!
>The fact that Solaris can do a lot of things either better or more
>easily than Windows doesn't count for much with the Windows users.
Though they properly never installed it on a new machine :-)
Solaris is free but support isn't.
Windows is not free but patches are.
And in many cases, Windows is MORE expensive than Solaris
w/ paid support; try running multiple desktop sessions.
Casper
--
Expressed in this posting are my opinions. They are in no way related
to opinions held by my employer, Sun Microsystems.
Statements on Sun products included here are not gospel and may
be fiction rather than truth.
Bruce Esquibel
> SOME of the patches; e.g. security patches, are available even if you
> have not purchased a support contract. For other patches, your choices
> are to pay, or to live with the problems until the next minor release of
> Solars!
Just for commentary...
There is another aspect to this you might be missing, the patches are formed
from two way communications between the users and creators. I don't see this
as being a step in the right direction.
Maybe 10 years ago when dial-up was popular, we had several of those U.S.
Robotics (later 3com) Total Control chassis. These were the one-chassis
black box that could handle like 333 modem lines. Besides being really
expensive, support was all pay or no play, and not cheap. I think just
minimal access to their support site was $2500 a year and if you wanted to
talk to engineering, was over $5k a year.
The problem I saw was, most of their bug reporting was coming from the
places that could afford to buy those contracts, meaning most of them were
idiots who were paying which assumed someone was working on a problem, but
they offered little or no information to the problem. "Many dropped calls if
most lights are lit in front" was about as detailed as it got.
I'm just trying to point out, someone somewhere might run into a legit
problem and not bother to say anything at all if they know it'll run $350 a
year to get a solution. Or wait till the next round of software is available
to see if it got fixed.
What Sun and USR used to do is mixing apples and oranges, I even understand
Sun's reasoning for the change, I just am not in the "seeing it as a good
thing" catagory.
Just seems to me they are going to choking off a valuable line of
communications, by accident.
-bruce
b...@ripco.com
Richard B. Gilbert
Providing "support" for software costs money. That money has to come
from somewhere! Usually it's collected from those who need support and
are willing and able to pay for it.
Dave
> Bruce Esquibel wrote:
>> What Sun and USR used to do is mixing apples and oranges, I even
>> understand
>> Sun's reasoning for the change, I just am not in the "seeing it as a good
>> thing" catagory.
>> Just seems to me they are going to choking off a valuable line of
>> communications, by accident.
>>
>> -bruce
>> b...@ripco.com
>>
>
> Providing "support" for software costs money. That money has to come
> from somewhere! Usually it's collected from those who need support and
> are willing and able to pay for it.
It is an interesting question, as to whether Sun would make more or less
money if they sold a contract for patch downloads for say $50/year. I
would personally pay that, but I would not spend $350/year, since the
benefit of patches just not justify it for my home machine. (That said,
although this computer is in my home, it does get used for things I get
paid for too, so it is a bit of a home/work machine. Still, I can't
justify $350/year).
Of course, if Sun sold a $50 support contract, some of the people paying
$350 might change to the lower cost option.
I wonder what the nett result would be?
--
I respectfully request that this message is not archived by companies as
unscrupulous as 'Exchange Experts'. In case you are unaware,
'Exchange Experts' take questions posted on the web and try to find
idiots stupid enough to pay for the answers, which were posted freely
by others. They are leeches.
Matt McLeod
> It is an interesting question, as to whether Sun would make more or less
> money if they sold a contract for patch downloads for say $50/year. I
> would personally pay that, but I would not spend $350/year, since the
> benefit of patches just not justify it for my home machine. (That said,
> although this computer is in my home, it does get used for things I get
> paid for too, so it is a bit of a home/work machine. Still, I can't
> justify $350/year).
>
> Of course, if Sun sold a $50 support contract, some of the people paying
> $350 might change to the lower cost option.
Purely speculative, but I reckon the majority of support contract
revenue isn't from these piddling little $350/year arrangements, it'll
be from companies with lots of Sun tin paying for hardware contracts.
Matt
Richard B. Gilbert
> In <496d...@212.67.96.135>, Dave wrote:
>> It is an interesting question, as to whether Sun would make more or less
>> money if they sold a contract for patch downloads for say $50/year. I
>> would personally pay that, but I would not spend $350/year, since the
>> benefit of patches just not justify it for my home machine. (That said,
>> although this computer is in my home, it does get used for things I get
>> paid for too, so it is a bit of a home/work machine. Still, I can't
>> justify $350/year).
>>
>> Of course, if Sun sold a $50 support contract, some of the people paying
>> $350 might change to the lower cost option.
>
> Purely speculative, but I reckon the majority of support contract
> revenue isn't from these piddling little $350/year arrangements, it'll
> be from companies with lots of Sun tin paying for hardware contracts.
>
> Matt
>
The $350 support contract is the bare bones minimum support. It lets
you download patches and maybe e-mail questions to technical support.
For more money (no idea how much more) you get telephone support. Maybe
for still more money, you get faster response. For huge bucks you get
somebody on site to hold your hand!
Hardware support is a whole different deal. A lot of companies can and
do stock their own spares, mostly disk drives. The only other thing
with moving parts is the fan(s). Once you get past the "infant
mortality" in the electronics, that's probably good for years and the
disks and fans are 98% of the problem.
Matt McLeod
> Matt McLeod wrote:
>> Purely speculative, but I reckon the majority of support contract
>> revenue isn't from these piddling little $350/year arrangements, it'll
>> be from companies with lots of Sun tin paying for hardware contracts.
>
> you download patches and maybe e-mail questions to technical support.
> For more money (no idea how much more) you get telephone support. Maybe
> for still more money, you get faster response. For huge bucks you get
> somebody on site to hold your hand!
Yes, I know what the contract is for. In my opinion Sun software
support contracts are a waste of money. No, scratch that, software
support contracts are in general a waste of money. The only reason
to pay for Solaris support is to get the patches.
There are exceptions to that general rule, but that's why they're
called "exceptions". I've found Bradmark support to be worthwhile,
for example.
> Hardware support is a whole different deal. A lot of companies can and
> do stock their own spares, mostly disk drives. The only other thing
> with moving parts is the fan(s). Once you get past the "infant
> mortality" in the electronics, that's probably good for years and the
> disks and fans are 98% of the problem.
I don't know what your background is, but in my experience larger
firms with a fair bit of Sun gear will usually have at least a
bronze contract on every machine in active use, and a higher level
of support on anything in production use.
I've yet to work anywhere with lots of Sun gear that goes in for the
"keep a cupboard full of spares" approach. It ends up being simpler to
just pay for the contracts at which point Sun is obliged to provide
spares as needed. And once you have the hardware support contract
the patch access is included.
Richard B. Gilbert
> In <_rSdnfbmjNqZ-fDU...@giganews.com>, Richard B. Gilbert wrote:
>> Matt McLeod wrote:
>>> Purely speculative, but I reckon the majority of support contract
>>> revenue isn't from these piddling little $350/year arrangements, it'll
>>> be from companies with lots of Sun tin paying for hardware contracts.
>> The $350 support contract is the bare bones minimum support. It lets
>> you download patches and maybe e-mail questions to technical support.
>> For more money (no idea how much more) you get telephone support. Maybe
>> for still more money, you get faster response. For huge bucks you get
>> somebody on site to hold your hand!
>
> Yes, I know what the contract is for. In my opinion Sun software
> support contracts are a waste of money. No, scratch that, software
> support contracts are in general a waste of money. The only reason
> to pay for Solaris support is to get the patches.
>
> There are exceptions to that general rule, but that's why they're
> called "exceptions". I've found Bradmark support to be worthwhile,
> for example.
>
>> Hardware support is a whole different deal. A lot of companies can and
>> do stock their own spares, mostly disk drives. The only other thing
>> with moving parts is the fan(s). Once you get past the "infant
>> mortality" in the electronics, that's probably good for years and the
>> disks and fans are 98% of the problem.
>
> I don't know what your background is, but in my experience larger
Education and medium sized business! Money is always tight!
> firms with a fair bit of Sun gear will usually have at least a
> bronze contract on every machine in active use, and a higher level
> of support on anything in production use.
>
Stocking spares for anything you can replace right now beats the hell
out of waiting two to four hours for a service guy to come on site and
do his thing!
This is particularly true when management can't or won't pay for two or
four hour response.
I could "fix" a failed drive in a RAID 1 or 5 array in about thirty
seconds; just grab the front of the drive, squeeze the latches and pull,
put the replacement in the slot and push till it seats! When the
service guy showed up, I handed him the failed drive and he handed me a
fresh spare. Replacing a bad "JBOD" took a little longer if I had to
run a restore.
This was DEC rather than Sun but the principle doesn't change!
> I've yet to work anywhere with lots of Sun gear that goes in for the
> "keep a cupboard full of spares" approach. It ends up being simpler to
> just pay for the contracts at which point Sun is obliged to provide
> spares as needed. And once you have the hardware support contract
> the patch access is included.
>
And if most, or all, of your drives are the same size you don't even
need a "cupboard full of spares", one or two spares are sufficient.
We did pay for the service contracts because there were things that
could go wrong that I couldn't fix very well even if I knew what was wrong.
Disk drives were a special case because:
a. they were the component most likely to fail, and
b. they were "hot pluggable"!
Matt McLeod
> Matt McLeod wrote:
>> I don't know what your background is, but in my experience larger
>
> Education and medium sized business! Money is always tight!
Similar here, but "education" covers a lot of territory. In my case
it was central IT in a large university. Funnily enough the people
controlling the budgets are the ones most insistent on having the
hardware support contracts.
> Disk drives were a special case because:
> a. they were the component most likely to fail, and
> b. they were "hot pluggable"!
Disk drives are indeed a special case. Even so, none of the places
I've worked has bothered stocking spares. Too many generations of
equipment.
While disk failure is usually regarded as the most common problem
my experience has been that most of our failures with Sun gear have
been with memory or network interfaces or LOMs. The last two are
pretty much a "rip out the motherboard and replace it" or even simply
"replace the machine, swapping the old disks into the new box"
scenario.
I've been in a position where a machine's contract was allowed to
lapse because someone thought they could save a few dollars. The
fix cost a small fortune because it was old gear and we had to get
someone from Sun in on a weekend -- maintaining the contract would've
been cheaper.
Matt