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This section contains the following topics:
The following changes are effective in Smart Update 3.1:
For more information, see Module Patching.
-report option in command-line mode
The -report option generates a report that summarizes applied patches and associated file changes for various product installations. By using different masks with this option, you can modify the report for specific products, releases, patch profiles, and patch IDs. You can create the report in plain text or XML format.
For more information, see bsu Command Reference.
For information about limitations of Smart Update, see Known Limitations in Smart Update.
By using Smart Update, you can obtain patches and maintenance packs for the following products:
| Note: | Service packs are replaced by maintenance packs starting with WebLogic Platform 9.2 Maintenance Pack 1. |
To start using Smart Update right away, refer to the sections listed in Table 1-1. These sections summarize the steps required to perform basic Smart Update tasks.
Smart Update is a standalone Java application that you can run independently of any software to upgrade the software installations quickly and easily with maintenance patches and maintenance packs. For more information about the products that Smart Update support, see Products Supported by Smart Update Version 3.1 on page 1-2. When you install a product for the first time, Smart Update is automatically installed in your BEA Home directory.
Smart Update is enhanced from time to time with new features, and is made available on the BEA download server.
The new version of Smart Update is placed on the BEA download server: if you log in using an earlier version of Smart Update, the latest version is pushed to your machine, and it is installed automatically.
After the installation, you will be prompted to close and start Smart Update again. Click Yes to start Smart Update, and then proceed to download patches, or click Cancel if you do not wish to proceed with downloads at that point.
When you start Smart Update at a later point, the updated version is invoked.
The following sections summarize the main features of the Smart Update program:
Smart Update delivers a set of robust features that simplify the process of installing, or applying, maintenance patches to the product installations:
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:
Multiple patches are bundled 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.
Each patch created for a particular maintenance level of a 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 the 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.
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. Therefore, it cannot be used to download patches. |
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 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.
Smart Update does not require each machine being updated to connect directly to BEA Customer Support or to the internet. Smart Update can be used in GUI or command-line mode to apply, remove, and view patches and patch information.
At least one internet-connected machine is required for the purpose of downloading patches and these can be made available to offline machines within the enterprise.
When a new version of Smart Update is available, on a connected machine, Smart Update applies the new version to itself.
For offline machines, the updated Smart Update installers that apply the new version are provided free.
On connected machines, Smart Update always updates its catalog when connected to BEA download server.
For offline machines, you need to include an updated catalog manually from a connected machine when copying patches.
You can obtain and apply patches as follows:
On connected machines, maintenance packs can be downloaded and installed.
For offline machines, you must acquire an Upgrade Installer from BEA Customer Support.
For more information about support for offline machines, see Maintaining Machines that are not Connected to BEA Customer Support.
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:
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 products installed in a given BEA Home directory, and your domains are based on specific 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.
Similarly, you may also want to apply a patch to only selected applications and not all applications for a given domain.
Smart Update provides convenient tools for viewing and installing maintenance pack updates:
To view the Maintenance Pack Update component, choose Maintenance Packs > Update... from the Smart Update main window. For more information about the Maintenance Pack Update window, see Viewing Available Maintenance Packs
When you use the Maintenance Pack Update component of Smart Update on machines that are connected to the Internet, a list of currently available maintenance packs is automatically displayed.
| Note: | You can view this list without logging in to BEA Customer Support; but to install a maintenance pack, you must log in. |
You can downgrade, or revert, a product installation to a previous maintenance pack. Smart Update displays the names of previously issued maintenance packs for the current product version.
BEA Customer Support provides publicly available patches, private patches, and Maintenance Pack updates in accordance with the following policy:
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.
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:
Figure 1-1 illustrates the steps you must complete to download and apply patches to a target installation.
For information about using Smart Update to apply maintenance patches, see Downloading and Applying Patches.
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:
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:
| 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 product installations in a production environment, see Best Practices for Distributing Maintenance Updates.
Under some circumstances, it is not desirable or possible to establish a direct connection from a particular machine to BEA Customer Support. For example:
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 the 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 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.
All products on this machine do not need to be deployed, configured, or running, unless you choose, for example, to keep a defined maintenance state current at the download location in order to perform preliminary patch conflict validation at download time.
Smart Update can be configured on this machine to download patches to any networked drive or directory. The default directory is BEA_HOME\utils\bsu\cache_dir\.
For information on downloading patches, see
For information on applying the patch on the offline machine
To use the GUI on an offline machine, click Offline in the Log-in dialog.
On connected machines, Smart Update patches itself and restarts if a new version is available when a connection is made. See How Smart Update Simplifies Patch and Maintenance Pack Management.
You can view the version number of the Smart Update installation by choosing Help > About from the GUI or by using the -version option in the command-line mode. When using Smart Update v3.x or later, you can compare the version on a connected machine and the one on an offline machine, and manually update the offline machine to match the latest version of Smart Update.
If an incompatible version of Smart Update is used to apply patch, there can be errors. These errors will usually not specifically indicate that the cause is mismatched Smart Update versions. In such cases, BEA Customer Support can confirm that there is a mismatch and supply a standalone Smart Update installer. The mismatch can be ascertained from the log files; see About the bsu Command for information on the -log option.
The standalone installer available from BEA Support is updated within 24 hours of an automatic Smart Update patch event. You can use the installer to install either to an empty BEA_HOME or to existing BEA_HOME containing installed products. When it is installed to an existing BEA_HOME, the installer will create the necessary directories and replace any existing version of Smart Update.
The standalone installer does not touch the contents of the existing cache_dir directory, and should not affect any of the previously downloaded or applied patches. It does not update existing patch-catalog.xml either.
To ensure that you have the latest version of all the required files, copy all the patches and all patch-*.xml files in the download directory, including the patch-catalog.xml from the connected machine to the offline machine.
The default patch download directory is BEA_HOME\utils\bsu\cache_dir. This can be changed from the Preference menu or using the parameter – patch_download_dir in the command-line mode.
The encoded patch catalog, patch-catalog.xml, contains metadata about a patch and the patch dependencies and conflicts. Localized patch catalog files, such as patch-ja.xml, include the information for that particular language (in this case, Japanese.)
In a complete offline environment, contact BEA Technical Support to obtain the latest copy of the patches and patch catalogs.
Figure 1-2 illustrates an example of providing maintenance updates to machines that are not connected directly to BEA Customer Support.
For more information, see Providing Maintenance Patches to Systems that Cannot Connect to BEA Customer Support.
Smart Update includes a component called Maintenance Pack Update, which you can use for downloading and installing maintenance packs as they become available for a product that you have installed. By using the Maintenance Pack Update component to install a maintenance 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.
For offline machines, you must acquire an Upgrade Installer from BEA Customer Support.
When installing a maintenance pack, Smart Update creates a backup of the current installation. You can use this backup to restore the system state if you need to roll back a maintenance pack update.
Figure 1-3 summarizes the steps you must complete to install a maintenance pack update.
For information about using Smart Update to download and install maintenance packs, see Downloading and Installing Maintenance Packs.
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