[dstep]

Hello
It was a long time ago, and unfortunately I can not remember exactly patches numbers, but for some patches swmgr complains incompatibility not before as usaly  but after installation and this breaks normal patches procedure - some backed up files removed, so both incompatible patches  can not be uninstalled (also may be installation database corrupted). After that impossible to use swmgr, it always complains about incompatibility and can not resolve it.
Does anybody faced such problem?

I noticed incompatibility:
665 with 918
918 with 1581

[jan-jaap]

My way to avoid too much of a mess, is:

1. Install IRIX 5.3 from CDROM
2. Install applications like development tools, performer, etc (anything for which patches are distributed)

Then patch:

1. Apply the Recommended/Required patch set for the system you're working on, e.g for an Indigo2 : 5.3_PI_Indigo_Indigo2_Indy_ChallengeS
2. Apply the Y2K patches for that system as well : y2k_patch_suites/5.3_PI_Indigo_Indigo2_Indy_ChallengeS
For IRIX 6.2 you can apply the relevant POSIX set too. This will give you 90% of what you want and you should probably stop here.

However, this is not all. More patches existed, sometimes labeled "fix on fail", which basically means: limited testing, do not apply blindly, but only if you suffer from the bug it's supposed to fix. Then there were patches that required a support contract. For IRIX 5.3 this includes patches for the development tools. If you lump all of this together in one directory and point 'inst' at it that's a recipe for disaster.

What you could do is cherry pick patches (after completing the 'Recommended/Required' and Y2K sets):

1. Point 'inst' at directory with everything
2. Do 'i A', 'k S', 'k D' and see what it thinks is installable
3. write down the numbers of these patches
4. Read the release notes for each of these patches and make an educated guess whether you want it or not:
* Pay attention to supported platform (XFS? IMPACT-only? Reality-Egnine only?). Inst will often happily install on the wrong platform.
* Have a look at the idb file to see what it wants to replace.
* Be skeptical.
* Stay away from graphics patches here -- if they were a good idea they would have been in the recommended set.
* Focus on things relevant to your install -- fixes to development tools etc, which would not have been in the base sets.

... and don't install any of it unless you're sure it's an improvement. If you didn't realize it by now: this is a tedious and time consuming procedure.

Which brings me back to my initial statement: you should probably stop at the Recommended/Required and Y2K sets.

[dstep]

Thank Jan
I'll be very appreciate if you could provide list of patches of your IRIX 5.3 and 4.0.5 for 4D/440 VGX (I have 4D/420 VGXT)