How UpdateXpress System Pack Installer applies updates

Regardless of whether you run UpdateXpress System Pack Installer from the Command Line Interface (CLI) or the Graphical User Interface (GUI), you need to follow the same step-by-step process:

Download the UpdateXpress System Pack Installer from the IBM web site.
Use the installer to acquire the UpdateXpress System Pack for the desired machine-type/operating system combination into a local or network-shared directory.
Run the installer.

Note: You may also download the updates directly from the IBM Web site. Just remember to download the update payload as well as the XML file.

For convenience choose the same destination directory for each UpdateXpress System Pack download, otherwise you will have to specify the destination directory with the -l command line argument. You can download multiple system packs for different machine-types into the same directory. When you run the installer, it detects the machine-type and uses the correct content for the machine-type. In some cases, there may be common files between system packs. Common files that are already present in the directory will not be downloaded again and the overall download time will be reduced.

You use the UpdateXpress System Pack Installer to apply UpdateXpress System Pack updates to your system. UpdateXpress System Pack Installer inventories the system on which the update will be performed, queries a specified location for a list of applicable update packages, compares the inventory to the applicable update list, recommends a set of updates to apply, and then deploys those updates to the system.

The tasks can be performed two ways:

As an update, which performs all four tasks.
As a compare, which performs only the first 3 tasks: inventory, query, and compare.

For more information on compare and update, see Compare and update functions.