Patch Numbering

Patches are identified by unique alphanumeric strings with the patch base code first, a dash, and a number that represents the patch revision number.

Each version of Solaris can have patches for virtually every package. Each of these patches is assigned a number that is unique for each version of Solaris. Thus, the patch for the core Solaris user package, SUNWcsu, has a different number assigned to it for each version of Solaris. This numbering scheme prevents you from applying a Solaris 2.6 patch for the SUNWcsu package to a system running Solaris 7 or 8.

The sendmail package, for example, has a released patch for each version of Solaris. For Solaris 2.5.1 the patch number is 103594-19; for Solaris 2.6, 105395-06; for Solaris 7, 107684-01. At the time of this writing, Sun has not released a sendmail patch for Solaris 8.

Some patches, when applied, affect multiple packages simultaneously. An example of this kind of patch is the kernel update patch released for each version of Solaris.

As time goes on, Sun releases multiple revisions of a patch. The revision number is reflected in the number following the dash. Thus, the patch identification number for the sendmail patch for Solaris 2.6 (105395-06) indicates that this patch has been released six times since Solaris 2.6 was shipped.