Plan to Install a Patch

This section contains a description of what to investigate as you consider installing software patches onto your current release. At the end of this activity, you will have a worklist of software patch files to install.

Check Available Patches

You can check the Altair website download page for the version of your current release to see if there are any published software patches.

From the Altair website, navigate to the desired product and click Download Now.
Log in using the account you set up as part of the pre-installation planning steps.
Click the link for the release version you have installed, such as 2019.01.
This opens a page listing all available updates, as well as any patches for that release.
Any files in the directory labeled Patches are software patches you might consider installing. If no patches are available for the selected release, this directory will be empty.
Read the README.1st.txt to learn what is in the patch, and whether it is considered required or recommended. To install the patch, proceed with the following instructions.

Build a Worklist of Software Patches to Install

First, verify your current software patch level to ensure that you haven't already installed the latest patch. Complete the steps below:

From the command line, set up a working environment to access your current release, then run the vovversion command with the -all option.
This will display the list of patches that have been installed.
```
% vovversion -all
2019.01
VOVDIR=/opt/rtda/2019.01/linux
Patch: p1 (linux)
Patch: p2
```
If this shows that your current release has the most recent software updates applied, then you can stop. Otherwise, continue with the steps in this chapter to create a worklist of software updates and install them to your release.
Identify the supported platforms in your release by running the following:
```
% cd $VOVDIR 
% cd .. 
% ls -l
```
The table below shows the platform-specific directory names and corresponding description used for the software patch files for these platforms. The exact descriptions used for the software patch files on the file download page may differ slightly.
Look for directories with these names and understand that when the directory exists, you should use the corresponding software patch file description in the table as a guide.
Look at the list on the download page to identify the exact file description that is similar.
Add this file to your worklist of patch files to download and install.

Directory

File Description

linux64

2019.01-patch-1:64-bit Linux

win64

2019.01-patch-1:32-bit Windows (for multi-platform installations)

Each platform that is installed generates a potential software patch file to download and install.
Start building your worklist by adding the "Platform independent files" patch file to it, from the "Required update files" group.
For each platform supported in your release, look in the list of "Required update files" for a file description that refers to it. If found, add that file to your worklist.
To install the recommended patch, then for each platform supported in your release, look in the list of "Recommended update files" for a file description that refers to it. If found, add that file to your worklist.

At the end of this activity, you will have added the patch files to your worklist that relate to all the platforms supported in your release, plus the platform independent patch file.

You are now done building the worklist. This is the list of patch files that you you need to download and install.