Greetings,

I'm a relative newcomer to AIX, so forgive me if I'm missing something
obvious...

Under HP-UX if I want to find out what security patches are available
for my current release of the OS I can execute an HP-supplied shell
script (/opt/sec_mgmt/spc/bin/security_patch_check) which will produce a
report of all the recommended patches.

Is there something similar for AIX (versions 4.2 and 5.2)?? If not, then
what is the best way to go about determining what patches I need to
ensure my systems are as secure as possible?

Thanks,
Barry Lake.

Barry Lake <barry@allegro.com> writes:

>Under HP-UX if I want to find out what security patches are available
>for my current release of the OS I can execute an HP-supplied shell
>script (/opt/sec_mgmt/spc/bin/security_patch_check) which will produce a
>report of all the recommended patches.

>Is there something similar for AIX (versions 4.2 and 5.2)?? If not, then
>what is the best way to go about determining what patches I need to
>ensure my systems are as secure as possible?

For AIX 4.3.3 and above:

<http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/support/pseries/aixfixes.html>

(I won't comment on the wisdom of requiring a JavaScript-enabled web
browser to fetch security patches.)

For AIX 4.2: Upgrade to 4.3.3, then use the previous case :-).

IBM has a security patch notification service.

<https://techsupport.services.ibm.com/server/pseries.subscriptionSvcs>

--
Dale Talcott, IT Research Computing Services, Purdue University
aeh@quest.cc.purdue.edu http://quest.cc.purdue.edu/~aeh/