5.5 PatchiX Training

The status of a patch tells you what phase of the patch lifecycle the patch is currently in.
Common values are:
• BT (Beta patch) is a patch status that signifies that the patch is not yet released to
the general public. These types of patches are available to specific customers who
request the patch and are willing to accept the risk of a patch that has not been
installed on many customer systems.
• GR (General Release) is a patch status that signifies that the patch is released for
general distribution. A BT patch that has been successfully used on a number of
customer systems will eventually become a GR patch.
• GS (General Supersede) is a patch that has been superseded by a newer patch.
The newer patch thus contains this patch. When a patch becomes GS it is
generally no longer distributed, but may be in some rare cases.
The flags column of the Qualify Patches screen contains two values separated by a
comma. These values are the recommendation and criticality (recommendation,
criticality) for the patch.
The Hewlett-Packard Patch Recommendations are as follows:
• A - FOS patch that is recommended for installation on all systems.
• B - FOS patch that is recommended for installation only if the problem is likely to
be experienced.
• C - FOS enhancement with a hardware dependency.
• D - FOS enhancement with a software dependency.
• E - Product (Subsystem) patch that should be applied if the product is installed.
• F - Product (Subsystem) patch that should be installed only if the problem is
likely to be experienced and the product is installed.
• G - Product (Subsystem) enhancement released as a patch.
• H - Limited release patch that may become GR.
• I - Site-specific patch that will never become GR.
• J - Other
The patch criticality values are as follows:
• 1 - System may experience a system failure without this patch.
• 2 - System may experience deadlock or hang without this patch.
• 3 - Data loss or corruption may be experienced without this patch.
• 4 - Program abort may occur without this patch.
• 5 - Gradual loss of memory objects, virtual memory or other performance
degradation may occur without this patch.
• 6 - Other - see the GR text information for a description.
• N - Not a critical patch.
If you are curious to understand more about a patch, HP Patch/iX provides you with a
great deal of information about a patch. To get detailed information select a patch from