Using SPident to Report the Current Service Pack Level

Novell Cool Solutions: Feature
By Kirk Coombs

Digg This - Slashdot This Posted: 1 Aug 2005

• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server

Background

Service Packs for SLES can be installed in three ways:

1. The system is installed from the Service Pack CD's.
2. The system is updated directly with the CD's using the "Patch CD Update" or "System Update" YaST modules.
3. The system is updated through updates from YaST Online Update (YOU).
   

Often, when a Service Pack is installed via methods 2 or 3 is is hard to know whether the Service Pack has actually been completely installed.  To make this easier the SPident tool was created.  SPident compares the packages currently on the system with a database of which packages belong to each Service Pack.

Using SPident

SPident is invoked with the command: SPident.  It has and has only one major flag available: -v.  This is for verbose operation.  For more verbose operation, keep adding more v's.

For example, the following output is on a SLES 9 system (installed with the original shipping CDs):

$ SPident -v

Summary                              # of packages (485)
Product/ServicePack                conflict        match  update      (shipped)
SLES‑9‑i386                         0    0%    484 99.8%       0   (1486 32.6%)
Unknown                                          1  0.2%                       


CONCLUSION: ServicePack Level: SLES‑9‑i386 => up‑to‑date

Notice that virtually all of the packages belong to SLES-9-i386. SPident reports that the system is up-to-date because it is not aware of any Service Packs.  Now, the auto-selected updates are installed via YOU.  This is shortly after the release of SP2:

$ SPident -v

Summary           (using 487 packages)
Product/ServicePack     conflict        match  update      (shipped)
SLES‑9‑i386          0    0%    253 52.0%       8   (1486 17.0%)
SLES‑9‑i386‑SP1      0    0%     77 15.8%       5    (481 16.0%)
SLES‑9‑i386‑SP2      1  0.2%    224 46.0%       5    (647 34.6%)
Unknown                           9  1.8%                       


CONCLUSION: System is NOT up‑to‑date!
  found    SLES‑9‑i386‑SP1 + "online updates"
  expected SLES‑9‑i386‑SP2

Notice that the SLES-9-i386, SLES-9-i386-SP1 and SLES-9-i386-SP2 all show up, but that SP2 is not reported as being the current Service Pack level.  This is because some, but not all, of the SP2 updates have been installed.  To discover which additional updates to install, SPident is invoked with more verbosity:

$ SPident -vv

Summary           (using 487 packages)
Product/ServicePack     conflict        match  update      (shipped)
SLES‑9‑i386          0    0%    253 52.0%       8   (1486 17.0%)
SLES‑9‑i386‑SP1      0    0%     77 15.8%       5    (481 16.0%)
SLES‑9‑i386‑SP2      1  0.2%    224 46.0%       5    (647 34.6%)
  ‑ SUSEfirewall2  3.1‑310.9 < 3.1‑310.12
Unknown                           9  1.8%                       

 Legend for Package Details: 
  ‑  conflicting package (found < expected)

CONCLUSION: System is NOT up‑to‑date!
  found    SLES‑9‑i386‑SP1 + "online updates"
  expected SLES‑9‑i386‑SP2

Notice now that SLES-9-i386-SP2 is missing the proper SUSEfirewall2 package.  Version 3.1-310.9 is installed, but SP2 expects 3.1-310.12.  For a more extensive breakdown of the packages belonging to the various Service Packs, try SPident -vvv or even SPident -vvvv.

Now, the SUSEfirewall2 conflict can be fixed by going back into YOU and looking for an update with version 3.1-310-12.  It is the 'Optional update for SUSEfirewall2'  (see Figure 1: Optional update for SUSEfirewall2).

Figure 1: Optional update for SUSEfirewall2

Installing this update brings the updates into synchronization with SP2.  Running SPident again yields:

$ SPident -vv

Summary           (using 487 packages)
Product/ServicePack     conflict        match  update      (shipped)
SLES‑9‑i386          0    0%    253 52.0%       9   (1486 17.0%)
SLES‑9‑i386‑SP1      0    0%     76 15.6%       5    (481 15.8%)
SLES‑9‑i386‑SP2      0    0%    224 46.0%       6    (647 34.6%)
Unknown                          10  2.1%                       

 Legend for Package Details: 
  ‑  conflicting package (found < expected)

CONCLUSION: System is up‑to‑date!
  found    SLES‑9‑i386‑SP2 + "online updates"

Reader Comments

• Great explanation, too bad the man page does give any details of the increased verbosity. If it did I would not have needed this explanation.
• I ran SPident -vv after a clean install from SLES9 SP3. It reported that it was only up to SLES9 base and that there are files from SP1 and SP2 that could be updated. However these files are not available on SP3. Does this mean, that SP3 does not trully bring the system up to date?
• Just an excellent tech note. The man page or -h should let you know about the additional verbosity feature.

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