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Installing Maintenance Updates and Service Packs

# Introduction

This section provides the following topics:

- Quick-Reference Aids
- How Smart Update Simplifies Patch and Service Pack Management
- Resources Available from BEA Customer Support
- Overview of Applying Maintenance Patches
- Overview of Installing Service Pack Updates
- Providing Maintenance to a Machine with No Connection to BEA Customer Support

# Quick-Reference Aids

To help you start using Smart Update right away, the Smart Update documentation provides a set of quick-reference aids, short documents to which you can refer while using Smart Update. The aids include three procedures for basic Smart Update tasks, a glossary of icons and terms for graphical interface users, and a cheat sheet of command-line options for command-line interface users. All four documents are available for download in PDF format. Table 1-1 describes the quick-reference aids and provides links to them.

All quick reference aids are available in both HTML format, for online use, and PDF format, for download. To download a quick-reference aid in PDF format:

1. In Table 1-1, click the URL for the desired document. A popup window is displayed.
2. In the popup window, choose File—> Print to print the document, or File—> Save As... to save it.

Table 1-1 Smart Update Quick-Reference Aids

Quick-Reference Aid | Contents
--- | ---
How to Download and Apply a Private Patch | Procedure for downloading and applying a private patch created for you by BEA Customer Support. The procedure is available at: `http://e-docs.bea.com/common/docs91/smart_update/pdf/aid-private.pdf`
How to Generate a Maintenance Snapshot | Procedure for creating a maintenance snapshot, a simple text file containing detailed information about the maintenance level of your BEA product installation. This file is requested by BEA Customer Support whenever you contact them for assistance. The procedure is available at: `http://e-docs.bea.com/common/docs91/smart_update/pdf/aid-snapshot.pdf`
How to Create a Custom Patch Profile | Procedure for creating a custom patch profile, which you use if you need to point an individual domain or one or more servers at patches that are not intended to be in effect for all servers that run on the BEA product installation. The procedure is available at: `http://e-docs.bea.com/common/docs91/smart_update/pdf/aid-custom.pdf`
Smart Update GUI Glossary | Definitions of the icons and labels used in the Smart Update graphical interface, available at: `http://e-docs.bea.com/common/docs91/smart_update/pdf/aid-gui.pdf`
bsu Command Reference | Cheat sheet for the `bsu` command, the Smart Update command-line interface to Smart Update, available at: `http://e-docs.bea.com/common/docs91/smart_update/pdf/aid-bsu.pdf`

# How Smart Update Simplifies Patch and Service Pack Management

Smart Update is a standalone Java application that you can run independently of BEA software to upgrade your software installations quickly and easily with maintenance patches and service packs. When you install a BEA product for the first time, Smart Update is automatically installed in your BEA Home directory.

The following sections summarize the main features of the Smart Update program:

- Features for Downloading and Applying Patches
- Features for Installing Service Pack Updates

## Features for Downloading and Applying Patches

Smart Update delivers a set of robust features that simplify the process of installing, or applying, maintenance patches to your BEA product installations:

- Direct Connection to BEA Customer Support
- Patch Validation and Conflict Checking
- Command-Line Interface
- Support for Distributed Patching
- Support for Patching Machines that Cannot Connect to BEA Customer Support
- Simplified Maintenance Rollback
- Scoping a Patch to a Specific Domain or Server

### Direct Connection to BEA Customer Support

When you start Smart Update, you are prompted to log in to BEA Customer Support using your BEA Support ID and password. (Obtaining a BEA Support ID is explained in Obtaining a BEA Account and Accessing Your Contract Entitlement.) After logging in, you can access private as well as publicly available patches:

- A private patch is one that BEA Customer Support makes available to you as part of a custom maintenance solution, or that otherwise is not generally available from the BEA Customer Support Repository. You retrieve a private patch after you provide the patch ID and passcode given to you by BEA Customer Support.
- A publicly available patch is one that BEA Customer Support makes generally available to anyone who has a BEA login ID. It is not necessary to have a support contract to download a publicly available patch. Smart Update displays a panel from which you can view information about publicly available patches that you can download. When you select a specific BEA product installation in your BEA Home directory, Smart Update displays a list of publicly available patches specific to the version and maintenance level of that installation. You can click on the entry for any publicly available patch in this listing to obtain detailed information.

BEA frequently bundles multiple patches into a single patch set, which simplifies the process of downloading and applying a related set of patches, and also helps ensure that the patches within each set are applied and managed in the proper sequence.

### Patch Validation and Conflict Checking

Each patch created by BEA for a particular maintenance level of a BEA product is validated against all existing patches for that maintenance level. When you run Smart Update to view and download patches, you automatically leverage the validation data provided by BEA Customer Support to eliminate the chances of applying a patch with a known conflict with any other patch that has been properly applied to your BEA product installation.

For example, when you attempt to apply one patch that depends on another that has not been applied, Smart Update notifies you of the dependency. You can then download the prerequisite patch and apply it before proceeding. Patch validation is performed automatically whenever you apply a patch. You also have the option of requesting patch validation before downloading a patch.

Occasionally BEA Customer Support may provide a replacement for a patch, or invalidate a patch, that you have previously downloaded and applied. If this happens, the first time you log in after the replacement becomes available, or the patch has become invalidated, Smart Update automatically notifies you. The patch you previously downloaded or applied is then marked invalidated in the patch's listing in the Smart Update graphical interface. Information about obtaining the replacement patch, when available, is also provided.

### Command-Line Interface

A command-line interface to Smart Update allows you to apply patches and obtain information about patches that have been downloaded or applied. You can perform these functions directly, from the command line, or indirectly, by writing scripts that include Smart Update commands.

Note: The command-line interface does not include the capability to connect to BEA Customer Support.

### Support for Distributed Patching

Smart Update supports a model in which patches, which have been downloaded to a central location in an organization, can be distributed via script to machines in a production environment on which BEA products have been installed. This enables you to adapt Smart Update to your business practices that govern how maintenance updates are distributed and applied to machines, especially those in a production environment from which a direct connection to BEA Customer Support for downloading patches is not appropriate or possible.

### Support for Patching Machines that Cannot Connect to BEA Customer Support

Smart Update does not require each machine being updated to connect directly to BEA Customer Support to obtain and apply maintenance patches. When you run Smart Update, you can apply patches and patch sets that have been made available in other ways.

For example, if a network failure or other infrastructure outage prevents you connecting to BEA Customer Support, you can obtain and apply patches as follows:

- If you have at least one machine from which you can log in to BEA Customer Support, you can download patches to that machine, and then copy them to a location that can be accessed by the machines from which it is not possible to have an Internet connection.
- If you are unable to log in to BEA Customer Support, you can apply patches that BEA customer support has provided to you via alternative means, such as email or physical media delivery.

### Simplified Maintenance Rollback

Smart Update makes it easy to remove patches or patch sets that have been applied, enabling you to restore earlier maintenance levels accurately and reliably:

- As part of its patch validation process, Smart Update notifies you whenever BEA Customer Support issues a patch that supersedes an earlier one that you have applied.
- Smart Update automatically notifies you of any patch in your download directory that is superseded or deprecated. If you have applied such a patch, Smart Update highlights the entry for it in the list of applied patches, and marks it as invalidated. Information about a replacement patch, if available, is added to the description of the invalidated patch.

### Scoping a Patch to a Specific Domain or Server

To support complex production environments, Smart Update allows you to point an individual domain or server at a patch or patch set that is not automatically in effect installation-wide; for example, a patch for the WebLogic system classpath that you want to use only in a single test domain. Using this feature is recommended if you have multiple BEA products installed in a given BEA Home directory, and your domains are based on specific BEA products. For example, if you have a domain that is based on AquaLogic Service Bus, you should scope any AquaLogic Service Bus classpath patches to only that domain. This way, servers in other domains that do not use AquaLogic Service Bus will not run with AquaLogic Service Bus classes in their classpath.

## Features for Installing Service Pack Updates

Smart Update provides convenient tools for viewing and installing service pack updates:

- Easy-to-Use Graphical Interface
- Listing of Available Service Packs
- Downgrade Capability

### Easy-to-Use Graphical Interface

The Service Pack Update component of Smart Update opens a new window to display a list of BEA Home directories and product installation versions for which service pack updates are available for viewing or installation.

### Listing of Available Service Packs

When you use the Service Pack Update component of Smart Update on machines that are connected to the Internet, a list of currently available service packs is automatically displayed.

Note: You can view this list without logging in to BEA Customer Support, but to install a service pack, you are required to log in.

### Downgrade Capability

If you need to downgrade a product installation to the previous service pack, Smart Update displays the names of each previously-issued service pack for the current product version. You then select the service pack release you want to downgrade to, and perform the downgrade.

# Resources Available from BEA Customer Support

BEA Customer Support provides publicly available patches, private patches, and Service Pack updates in accordance with the following policy:

- Anyone with a BEA login ID can view and download publicly available patches, by logging in to BEA Customer Support with the Smart Update tool. To get a BEA login ID, simply create a BEA user account. Such accounts are freely available to anyone.
- Only customers with a valid support contract for BEA products can download private patches and Service Pack updates.

For information about creating a BEA account, obtaining a BEA login ID and password, and linking your BEA login ID to a support contract, see Obtaining a BEA Account and Accessing Your Contract Entitlement.

# Overview of Applying Maintenance Patches

Smart Update makes it easy to view and install maintenance patches for a target product installation. Smart Update also helps you organize patches by providing lists of both the patches available from BEA Customer Support and the patches that you have already downloaded and applied.

In the main Smart Update window you can display lists of patches on two tabs, the Get Patches tab and the Manage Patches tab:

- The Get Patches tab provides two lists of publicly available patches for the selected product installation: a list of patches available for download, and a list of those already downloaded. Multiple machines can share a single patch download directory.
- The Manage Patches tab displays two lists of patches: a list of patches already applied to the target product installation, and a list of patches that have been downloaded for the target installation and are ready to be applied.

Figure 1-1 illustrates the steps you must complete to download and apply patches to a target installation.

Figure 1-1 Applying Maintenance Patches

For information about using Smart Update to apply maintenance patches, see Downloading and Applying Patches.

## Providing Maintenance to Distributed Machines

The command-line interface to Smart Update is especially convenient if you need to maintain large numbers of distributed machines in a carefully controlled, reliable, and reproducible state. For example, suppose you are involved in the following business scenarios:

- You have a tightly controlled production environment in which you need to run multiple installations of BEA products at highly specific maintenance levels.
- The business practices for your IT environment require that software maintenance updates are distributed to all machines from a central, internal source.

An example of using Smart Update's command-line interface to apply a specific set of patches to multiple machines consists of the following steps:

1. From one machine, use Smart Update's graphical interface to log in to BEA Customer Support to download the required patches.
2. Copy the patches into a location that can be accessed by each machine to which the patches are to be applied.
3. Create a shell script that contains the Smart Update commands for applying those patches.
4. Run the script on each machine on which the BEA products are installed.

Note: The machine to which maintenance updates are downloaded from BEA Customer Support must have a target installation selected that matches the distributed target installations to be updated.

For an example of distributing maintenance to multiple BEA product installations in a production environment, see Best Practices for Distributing Maintenance Updates.

## Providing Maintenance to a Machine with No Connection to BEA Customer Support

Under some circumstances, it not desirable or possible to establish a direct connection from a particular machine to BEA Customer Support. For example:

- You urgently need to download and apply a critical patch, but the Internet connection for your business is temporarily unavailable due to a system failure.
- You need to provide regularly scheduled maintenance updates to production machines that reside in a DMZ, or behind a firewall, where the ability to make a connection to BEA Customer Support is permanently disabled.

Smart Update supports a variety of methods for providing maintenance updates to such machines. Although Smart Update makes it easy to connect to BEA Customer Support as a means of obtaining patches, you are not required to get patches in this way. Smart Update also allows you to obtain patches from alternative sources, such as remotely mounted disks or removable media. By taking advantage of this flexibility, you can adapt Smart Update to your organization's IT practices and create a controlled, reliable, and reproducible process for maintaining your BEA product installations.

If your environment includes at least one machine from which you can log in to BEA Customer Support, you can obtain and distribute patches to all BEA product installations in your environment that are supported by Smart Update. There is, however, one prerequisite for the machine used to download patches: it must be able to select a target installation that matches the target installation on the other machines to which updates are subsequently made available.

Figure 1-2 illustrates an example of providing maintenance updates to machines that are not connected directly to BEA Customer Support.

Figure 1-2 Example of Patching a Machine that Cannot Connect to BEA Customer Support

For more information, see Providing Maintenance Patches to Systems that Cannot Connect to BEA Customer Support.

# Overview of Installing Service Pack Updates

Smart Update includes a component called Service Pack Update, which you can use for downloading and installing service packs as they become available for a BEA product that you have installed. By using the Service Pack Update component to install a service pack, you retrieve, from BEA Customer Support, only the code and media archives needed for the components currently installed. This customized retrieval optimizes the size of the archive, which makes the download process more efficient.

When installing a service pack, Smart Update creates a backup of the current installation. You can use this backup to restore system state if you need to roll back a service pack update.

Figure 1-3 summarizes the steps you must complete to install a service pack update.

Figure 1-3 Installing a Service Pack

For information about using Smart Update to download and install service packs, see Downloading and Installing Service Packs.