Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!convex!texsun!exodus!exodus-bb!khb From: khb@chiba.Eng.Sun.COM (Keith Bierman - SPD Advanced Languages) Newsgroups: comp.sys.hp Subject: Re: Software patches Message-ID: Date: 10 Oct 90 18:07:16 GMT References: <18@gauss.mmlai.UUCP> <5570507@hpfcdc.HP.COM> <24818@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU> Sender: news@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM Organization: Sun MegaSystems Lines: 75 In-reply-to: bb@palmetto.cis.ufl.edu's message of 10 Oct 90 03:03:13 GMT In article <24818@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU> bb@palmetto.cis.ufl.edu (Brian Bartholomew) writes: ... > If you had access to such a list, would you be inclined to > install all or most of the patches? I think I would. Of course; I would install each and every problem fix I could get my hands on. I want the most correct and complete operating system I can get. That's what I am paying for. Would a car owner turn down a warranty repair on the brakes, for any reason? In many years of working on systems from Supercomputers to micros, I have NEVER known a vendor to provide perfectly safe "patches". This is true from IBM down to the fellow up the block. This is not like a product like an automobile. >2) What happens if a customer chooses a standard procedure of > installing every patch that HP makes available? Patches are really ... This is the most damning admission I have heard on this group in several months. You have admitted that HP can not even keep their own ... This is a statement of what everyone in the industry has always meant by a patch. There is a name for the complete set of patches to a product, AFTER complete QA. It is called a release. Patches are a way for a vendor to quickly respond to a users dire problem in a timely fashion. If you want complete QA, you can't have a timely fix. The risk of a minimally tested fix varies from site to site, from code to code and it is irresponsible for a system manager to indiscriminately load all patches on a system ... ANY vendors system. Perhaps in the HP-UX technical support sales literature, HP should mention that the customer may have his choice of known bugs; but by company policy, in no case shall he be allowed to have a system completely free of bugs. Now that I read that again, perhaps it should be moved to the Sales Manual for the technical support managers... Perhaps you have been working in a different industry than I ... I have never found a computer system to be bug free. Ever. The buglist for a mature IBM S/360 running a 15 year old OS at a very well manage site I used to consult to was a large phonebook sized document. Of course, lots of codes turn out to RELY on system bugs. Installing patches was a very careful and time consuming process .... as every patch was valdiated against ALL of the codes run at OUR site. This took weeks to months .... Needless to say, the system was "never up to date" in the sense you mean. It did, however, provide a stable development platform for upwards of a thousand programmers and support staffers. I am speaking for myself, not Sun, not HP or anyone else. "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Brian Bartholomew UUCP: ...gatech!uflorida!matrix.math.ufl.edu!bb University of Florida Internet: bb@matrix.math.ufl.edu -- "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Brian Bartholomew UUCP: ...gatech!uflorida!matrix.math.ufl.edu!bb University of Florida Internet: bb@matrix.math.ufl.edu -- ---------------------------------------------------------------- Keith H. Bierman kbierman@Eng.Sun.COM | khb@chiba.Eng.Sun.COM SMI 2550 Garcia 12-33 | (415 336 2648) Mountain View, CA 94043