What is the difference between a "PR" release, "RP" release, "SP" release, and "P" release?

Problem

There are many patches on the Veritas SORT  patch site and the terminology can be confusing.

 The purpose of this document is to clarify the patch levels and the installation of said patches.

Solution

There are many different patch levels.

The different patch levels and how they are utilized will be explained here.

A "P" release - this patch is a minor patch with only a few specific fixes included. Sometimes a "P" release will only include 1 specific fix for an specific issue or environment.

An "RP" release- this is a "Rolling Patch".

A "Rolling Patch" is a minor patch update.

An "SP" release- This is a "Service Pack".

This is a major patch update.

The release may or may not be a full media for installation.

Note that if an "installer" script exists in the base product directory of the media then the SP is a full media for new system installation.

An "SP" is cumulative of prior RPs (minor patches, typically with all the prior fixes contained therein).

For example:

5.1SP1 will include the fixes from: 5.1RP1 and 5.1RP2.

For versions of Storage Foundation prior to 5.1, the equivalent patch level to an "SP" was the "MP" (Maintenance Patch) level.

A "PR" Release- This is a "Platform Release".

This patch / release will add either new kernel update support or new platform support.

In some instances, the "PR" release may be a full installer for a particular OS version.

For example:

5.1SP1 supports Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (RHEL5).

5.1SP1PR2 adds kernel support to the Storage Foundation/ HA product stack for RHEL6.

Understanding the implementation of patches can be very useful, and additional examples follow below.

Example 1:

It is desired to install the latest Storage Foundation patches on a system running Solaris 10.

An installation of Storage Foundation 5.1 currently exists on a system.

The current latest version of product available at the time of this example is 5.1SP1RP2.

To update to the latest revision, the patch implementation would be as follows:

1) Install the available patch 5.1SP1.

2) Next, apply 5.1SP1RP2 (Rolling Patch 2 requires SP1 be installed prior to application, and includes all fixes in the previously released 5.1SP1RP1 patch).

Reboots are required after Service Pack and Rolling Patch application.

After reboot, the new version level can be verified by perfoming the following command:

Example 2:

It is desired to install Storage Foundation product on a system running RHEL 6 Update 1.

Due to platform support requirements, the base product installation would be 5.1SP1PR2 (Service Pack 1 with Platform Release #2).

In addition, RHEL6 Update 1 (RHEL 6.1) has an issue with the PR2 release where VxVM modules may fail to load at boot.

Patch Release "P1" was released to provide support for VxVM on Update 1.

Therefore, to successfully load the correct patch levels for the proper operation of the system:

1) The system is loaded with 5.1SP1PR2 release.

(This release includes 5.1 with SP1 and Platform Release code already included in the distribution)

2) Application of 5.1SP1PR2P1 is required for proper operation where RHEL 6 Update 1 is in place, so that "P" patch level (P1) is loaded in addition to the base Platform Release. 

To verify successful application of P1, checking rpm output of VxVM will indicate the P1 is installed.

The command to check the version is as follows: