[[Pca http://www.par.univie.ac.at/solaris/pca/]] (Patch Check Advanced)
is a lovely program for dealing with Solaris patches. To quote its
site:

> Patch Check Advanced (pca) generates lists of installed and missing
> patches for Sun Solaris systems and optionally downloads patches. It
> resolves dependencies between patches and installs them in correct
> order.

It is miles better than any of the alternatives I've seen (including
Sun's own stuff) and looks like it's going to be pretty much the only
tool I need to manage Solaris patches. Highly recommended.

{{CutShort}}

Handy features:
* just plain works. Does the right (and smart) things by default.
* simple Perl script that requires no setup; you can download and run.
* doesn't require _root_ privileges for most operations; easy to try out.
* can list (or install) only patches that don't require reboots.
* can create patch reports for remote machines, given just a bit of info
  about them.
* can get all patches if you have a SunSolve account/etc.

As the author says, he wrote pca because he didn't accept that patch
management had to be cumbersome. He succeeded.

Do check periodically for updates; as the [[Notes section
http://www.par.univie.ac.at/solaris/pca/notes.html]] indicates,
Sun every so often does peculiar things with their patch list that
have to be worked around.

Credit where credit is due department: I found out about pca from a
comment left by one of the [[MIE http://www.mie.utoronto.ca]] admins on
[[this techblog entry /blog/solaris/PatchExitCodes]]. Thank you very
much.