Chapter 1 HP-UX Patches and Patch Management

Patches are software that HP releases to deliver incremental updates to a system. Patches are best known for delivering defect fixes, but also deliver new functionality and features, enable new hardware, and update firmware. You can use HP-UX patches to update HP-UX software without having to completely reinstall a system application. For a description of patches, see Chapter 3: “HP-UX Patch Overview”.

You may wonder why you should be concerned with patch management. HP recommends that you address patch management to reduce the risk of problems such as system hangs, panics, memory leaks, data corruption, application failures, and security breaches. If your job involves any of the following concerns, then you need patch management:

Patch management involves any of the following tasks:

For a description of patch management, see Chapter 4: “Patch Management Overview”.

	NOTE: You can approach patch management in many different ways with no one approach being the correct way. You must base decisions regarding patch management on the specifics of your individual situation. Even then, there may be more than one reasonable path.