[Info-vax] : Welcome to lockdown - HP limiting access to patches

[Simon Clubley]

On 2010-08-18, Art Wiens <awiens at canwest.com> wrote:
> Anyone else see this at the ITRC main page? :
>
> Important note: As of September 18 (or shortly thereafter), HP will
> institute a change in the way that Patch services are accessed. Beginning
> at that time, Patch access will be through the ITRC support portal. You
> need to have a valid ITRC user ID and password and ***** will now also
> need an active HP support agreement that includes Software Updates linked
> to your ITRC profile to access Patch content and services. *****
>
> "No patches for you!  Next!" (Patch Nazi)
>

HP sent me a email overnight confirming this.

My main concern is easily finding out when there is a new patch available.

I don't know if HP have implemented better options over the last couple of
years, but for several years, I have been using the patch notifications
posted to Notes on Eisner to track new VMS patches.

This was possible because a command procedure running on Eisner scans the
FTP patch directory tree for new and changed patches and posts any changes
to Notes.

I assume this procedure will now stop working so I really hope HP have a
automated notification procedure which causes a email to be sent as soon as
a new patch is issued. It would be a major pain to have to login to a system
daily and manually pull up a list of patches and work out what has changed
from yesterday.

(HP have had notification procedures in the past, but when I looked at them,
they didn't send what I expected.)

BTW, Solaris has recently gone down this route as well. I wonder if that
is where HP got this idea from.

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
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