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

[VAXman- at SendSpamHere.ORG]

In article <i4iqkn$hu8$1 at news.eternal-september.org>, Simon Clubley <clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> writes:
>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.

Yikes...



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

Maybe this is their way of avoid patches altogether! :)



>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.)

HP is Hopeless and Pathetic.  I've yet to get any email message from HP
that isn't pure HTML.  If you wanted to automate your own patch handler
from email they send, you're going to have to parse out all of the HTML.
I "parse" most HP email directly into the WASTEBASKET folder. ;)  Good
luck with what becomes of this mess.  I'm wondering how they're planning
to handle the DPSS program folks?  Especially, since this DPSS program 
programmer is still awaiting patches for the bugs I've reported in V8.4.
As I see it, HP may finally address the issues I've reported but I won't
have a way of seeing, downloading and applying the solutions.



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

Keeping pace with the other industry failures!  Kudos for HP! :roll:

-- 
VAXman- A Bored Certified VMS Kernel Mode Hacker    VAXman(at)TMESIS(dot)ORG

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