Patche installation "8_recommended" didnt work

[andimue]

Hello,

I got a Solaris 2.8 sparc-machine with allready installed recommended-patch-packet ( old version ). Now today I downloaded to actual 2.8 recommended-patch-packet from sunsolve. After unzipping it as root-user I started the install_cluster, coming along in the zip-file. But none of the patches had been installed. Most of the said : Installation of xxxxxxx faild. Return code 5
I also got some return 2,8 and 25. So I checked the log-file from one of my return-code 5 patch. I said :
This appears to be an attempt to install the same architecture and
version of a package which is already installed. This installation
will attempt to overwrite this package.

/opt/patches/8_Recommended/108827-11/SUNWcsl/install/checkinstall: /opt/patches/8_Recommended/108827-11/SUNWcsl/install/checkinstall: cannot open
pkgadd: ERROR: checkinstall script did not complete successfully
Dryrun complete.
No changes were made to the system.

Rebooting the machine didnt help.
Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks
andimue

 

[andimue]

got an answer from outside tek-tips. In my case it was a permission problem.
I post the answer for further use.
andimue

-----------------------------------------------------------
The following error occurs when trying to install a patch
that uses the 'checkinstall' script:

Generating list of files to be patched...
Verifying sufficient filesystem capacity ( exhaustive method) ...
Installing patch packages ...
pkgadd: ERROR: checkinstall script did not complete successfully.
Patch <patch number> has not been applied to this system
Installpatch is terminated.

Problem Solution


There are a number of reasons one gets this error message.
Hopefully, this document can point you in the direction of the actual reason on your machine why this is happening.

A) One reason this happens is that the 'pkgadd' command attempts to run the 'checkinstall' script as the user 'nobody', and that user is unable to access the 'checkinstall' script. To check this,
1. login as root
2. Enter 'su nobody'
3. Attempt to 'cat' the checkinstall scripts in that patch.
For example:
cat /tmp/103247 07/SUNWadmap/install/checkinstall

If this 'cat' fails, you've got a permissions problem somewhere in the path to the checkinstall script. An remember... there are a number of checkinstall scripts for every patch, so you should check all of them.

If it is a permissions problem, usually the command
chmod -R og+rx /tmp/103247-01

will help restore the permissions such that the checkinstall script is accessable to the 'nobody' user.

Obviously, the 'nobody' user must exist on the system. If it does not, it should be added back in again.

B) Another reason this happens is that the root user is a 'ksh' user with something in his environment that's getting in the way of 'installpatch'.
To check on this problem, you can create a new user named
&quot;install&quot;. This user should have a uid=0, home directory of /tmp, shell of /sbin/sh. The passwd file should have the entry:

install::0:1:test install:/tmp:/sbin/sh

Then run 'pwconv' to create a shadow entry and then login as
'install' and attempt to perform the patch installation.

C) A final, last resort is to just remove the line in the 'pkgmap' file that refers to the 'checkinstall' script. The 'pkgmap' file can be found in the directory SUNW<xxxx>, which is a sub-directory in the patch directory. This will simply inhibit the 'pkgadd' command from even running the 'checkinstall' script, so it just can't fail.
Obviously, this is to be used as a last resort.