I have mentioned several problems with Sun’s smpatch utility in the past few blog entries, and it looks like I hit another nasty bug. The sconadm utility allows me to register a server:
$ sconadm register -a -r RegistrationProfile
sconadm is running Authenticating user … finish registration!
But when I run the smpatch utility to check for updates, it says the system isn’t registered:
$ smpatch analyze
Failure: Cannot connect to retrieve Database/current.zip: This system is currently unregistered and is unable to retrieve patches from the Sun Update Connection. Please register your system using the Update Manager.
This is somewhat amusing, though it has caused me a good deal of consternation. I am extremely disappointed with the quality of Sun’s patch tools, and am posting this here in case other folks are encountering similar problems. Hopefully they will see that they are doing nothing wrong, and the tools they have been provided are broken.