I have collected some information over the years that I find pretty handy, so I thought it would be good to share it with you. Here we have a list of return codes that you can expect to see when patching Solaris servers. Now, the codes didn’t change much over the years up until Solaris 10, when patchadd went from a script to a binary, and then the first 33 or so stayed the same and they just added a few more at the end. I have therefore broken out the list into what OS each code applies to, whether it’s 9 or 10 or both. From this list you should be able to get a good idea of how those patch installs are going.
| Code | Meaning | Platform |
| 0 | No error | Solaris 9/10 |
| 1 | Usage error | Solaris 9/10 |
| 2 | Attempt to apply a patch that’s already been applied | Solaris 9/10 |
| 3 | Effective UID is not root | Solaris 9/10 |
| 4 | Attempt to save original files failed | Solaris 9/10 |
| 5 | pkgadd failed | Solaris 9/10 |
| 6 | Patch is obsoleted | Solaris 9/10 |
| 7 | Invalid package directory | Solaris 9/10 |
| 8 | Attempting to patch a package that is not installed | Solaris 9/10 |
| 9 | Cannot access /usr/sbin/pkgadd (client problem) | Solaris 9/10 |
| 10 | Package validation errors | Solaris 9/10 |
| 11 | Error adding patch to root template | Solaris 9/10 |
| 12 | Patch script terminated due to signal | Solaris 9/10 |
| 13 | Symbolic link included in patch | Solaris 9/10 |
| 14 | NOT USED | Solaris 9/10 |
| 15 | The prepatch script had a return code other than 0. | Solaris 9/10 |
| 16 | The postpatch script had a return code other than 0. | Solaris 9/10 |
| 17 | Mismatch of the -d option between a previous patch install and the current one. | Solaris 9/10 |
| 18 | Not enough space in the file systems that are targets of the patch. | Solaris 9/10 |
| 19 | $SOFTINFO/INST_RELEASE file not found | Solaris 9/10 |
| 20 | A direct instance patch was required but not found | Solaris 9/10 |
| 21 | The required patches have not been installed on the manager | Solaris 9/10 |
| 22 | A progressive instance patch was required but not found | Solaris 9/10 |
| 23 | A restricted patch is already applied to the package | Solaris 9/10 |
| 24 | An incompatible patch is applied | Solaris 9/10 |
| 25 | A required patch is not applied | Solaris 9/10 |
| 26 | The user specified backout data can’t be found | Solaris 9/10 |
| 27 | The relative directory supplied can’t be found | Solaris 9/10 |
| 28 | A pkginfo file is corrupt or missing | Solaris 9/10 |
| 29 | Bad patch ID format | Solaris 9/10 |
| 30 | Dryrun failure(s) | Solaris 9/10 |
| 31 | Path given for -C option is invalid | Solaris 9/10 |
| 32 | Must be running Solaris 2.6 or greater | Solaris 9/10 |
| 33 | Bad formatted patch file or patch file not found | Solaris 9/10 |
| 34 | The appropriate kernel jumbo patch needs to be installed | Solaris 9 |
| 34 | Incorrect patch spool directory | Solaris 10 |
| 35 | Later revision already installed | Solaris 10 |
| 36 | Cannot create safe temporary directory | Solaris 10 |
| 37 | Illegal backout directory specified | Solaris 10 |
| 38 | A prepatch, prePatch or a postpatch script could not be executed | Solaris 10 |
| 39 | A compressed patch was unable to be decompressed | Solaris 10 |
| 40 | Error downloading a patch | Solaris 10 |
| 41 | Error verifying signed patch | Solaris 10 |
| 42 | Error unable to retrieve patch information from SQL DB. | Solaris 10 |
| 43 | Error unable to update the SQL DB. | Solaris 10 |
| 44 | Lock file not available | Solaris 10 |
| 45 | Unable to copy patch data to partial spool directory. | Solaris 10 |
And it’s just that easy. Enjoy!
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