[SunHELP] Diff between patches and MUs?

[Magnus Abrante]

On Fri, May 11, 2001 at 03:48:18PM -0400, Wolfgang Engelien wrote:
> >On Fri, 11 May 2001, Ben Ricker wrote:
> >
> >| What exactly is the difference between the "Recommended" patches and
> >| Maintenance updates? The MUs are just a bunch of patches! Just curious
> >| is I need to do both or just the Recommended. MU4 is 148 megabytes ZIPPED!
> >
> >The Recommended Patch Cluster conatins patches that are important for all
> >systems to apply. These patches mainly address security and
> >stability/performance fixes.
> >
> >The MUs contain all the patches in the Recommended Patch cluster, as well
> >as many other patches that fix small errors in not-as-important areas of
> >Solaris, and also patches that introduce new functionality into Solaris.
> >
> >Applying a MU will bring your server up spec with the current release of
> >Solaris. In other words, applying the MU3 for Solaris 8 will bring your
> >system up to Solaris 8 1/01 standards. Applying MU4 will bring it up to
> >Solaris 8 4/01 standards, and so on.

Just wanted to add two things, the MU also contains support for new 
hardware which have been added after the first release of the OS, also
the MU and the patches shiped with it have been tested together so they
are knowned to work.. Patches are always being tested, but its not
possible to test all of them together in all possible combinations. 

        //Magnus Abrante
/* This is my opinion and not the one of my empolyer */