I need to patch and update some Solaris/SPARC boxes, using the latest Solaris Patch Cluster from Oracle. Nevermind the flash animation that their support website consists of, the best part of the process so far has been this: The zip file that the patch cluster is distributed as is continually failing to unzip successfully on the box. So I finally just unzipped it on my laptop. It unzipped fine. I checked the README file, and I found this:
If you experience problems unzipping this patch cluster please refer to MOS article 1020109.1 ‘Unzip of Solaris 10 Recommended Patch Clusters and Solaris 10 Sun Alert Patch Clusters fails’, available from:
Which contains this helpful explaination:
The size of the Solaris 10 patch clusters now exceeds the size limit for the standard unzip utility. Patches need to be applied to resolve this issue.
It’s like a Möbius strip of stupidity.