Sun Patch Check – Free Opensource utility to check Patch Status

Sun Patch Check is a simple opensource utility from “Titania” that runs in UNIX or Linux systems to check the Patch installation status in a Sun Solaris server running on a SPARC or Intel platform and compare it to its own database of the latest recommended patches for that version of Solaris operating system.

I loved the authors Nipper security audit tool for network devices. It was one of the greatest utilities I have ever come across and this is no ordinary as well.

Sun Patch Utility can make life for Admin much easier and can be included in scripts to run in a big Sun Server farm to help stay on top of the recommended patch status.

To install, you need to have GNU C Compiler installed on the server. For more information on installing GNU C Compiler on your Sun Server click here. While if you choose to run on a Linux system most if not all should by default have the GNU C compiler installed.

Once GNU C Compiler is installed.

Download the source

solaris10# wget

http://www.titania.co.uk/downloads/sunpatchcheck-1.6.tgz

Unzip & untar the downloaded file

solaris10# gzip sunpatchcheck-1.6.tgz

solaris10# tar -xvf sunpatchcheck-1.6.tar

Change Directory to sunpatchcheck-1.6

solaris10# cd sunpatchcheck-1.6

Run the compiler

solaris10 ~/sunpatchcheck-1.6# gcc -o sunpatchcheck sunpatchcheck.c

That should install the utility.

Update Database

Sun Patch Check maintains individual database for the latest recommended patches for each of the Sun Solaris versions (SPARC/Intel)

solaris10 ~/sunpatchcheck-1.6# ./sunpatchcheck –update

Run showrev

Run a showrev -p on your Sun Server and pipe it to a text file

solaris10 ~/sunpatchcheck-1.6# showrev -p > showrev_intel10.txt

Now compare the results

solaris10 ~/sunpatchcheck-1.6# ./sunpatchcheck –check=showrev_intel10.txt –solaris=10i

where

–check instructs to check the file mentioned

–solaris denotes the version of Sun Solaris against which this showrev is run. This can 10,9,8,7,2.6,2.5.1 (where applicable if the platform is intel, use an “i” like 10i)

This should compare and give you the results.

For more options,

solaris10 ~/sunpatchcheck-1.6# ./sunpatchcheck –help