== Easier Solaris patch management with _pca_

Every so often having comments on here *really* pays off. A commenter
on my [[previous entry PatchExitCodes]] gave me a pointer to [[pca
http://www.par.univie.ac.at/solaris/pca/]] (Patch Check Advanced), an
actual sane patch management program for Solaris machines; if you want
more reasons to take a look, see my [[longer comments /Software/pca]].

One of the nice things about [[pca]] is that it led me to the
_[[patchdiag.xref http://patches.sun.com/reports/patchdiag.xref]]_
file, which is a big cross index of all of the Solaris patches, and to
[[patches.sun.com http://patches.sun.com/]] in general. Patchdiag.xref
is in a crappy format but clearly it can be parsed, which means
it can be turned into XML, which can be turned into [[Atom feeds
../sysadmin/RSSForVendorUpdates]]. I think I have a project. (Time to
learn XSLT.)

(I'm surprised Sun doesn't already have an XML version of
_patchdiag.xref_. It's not like they're shy about using Java for system
management applications, and Java apps usually love XML.)

So thank you, semi-anonymous commenter, for the pointer to [[pca]].

(Possibly [[pca]] is old news to the really experienced Solaris
administrators, in which case I will look sheepish.)