sun stop solaris free updates???he want a service plan number.i google and i see that i must to pay for that.is any possible way or a free service plan to install updates for free???

Not that I know of.

What is it that you want, exactly?

I've always had the luxury of an account I can use to login at SunSolve. I just went and tried without using that account. They allow you to create an account, so I created a new one. However, when I tried to download the latest security and patch cluster for Solaris 10, it said I was trying to access premium content. It offered me the option of attaching a contract number to my account. That seems rather odd to me.

I also went to look at OpenSolaris, but I'm less familiar with where to find things there, so I'm still poking around.

Maybe someone else who really knows could jump in here.

What's odd about it? You have to pay for Solaris support & patches, especially for newer versions.

Ah. The brevity of your first reply lead to a misinterpretation on my part. Since the OP asked more than one question, your "not that I know of" could be interpreted in more than one way. What you really meant was that you weren't aware of any way of getting free updates, not that you weren't aware of Sun stopping free updates.

Since Solaris had gone open source, and you can get it for free, I had assumed that security patches in particular would also be available. I mean, you don't want to be putting your OS out there with known security glitches. That just garners bad reputation. That's also why I asked the OP for clarification. It's not clear whether he's talking about OpenSolaris, Solaris 10, patches, major updates, or what.

Security patches for Solaris 10, Solaris releases and Solaris updates (eg. S10u8) are downloadable for free without requiring a service contract. Non security related patches are included with every next update.
If you are using up to date OpenSolaris dev builds instead of Solaris 10, you'll get most of the Solaris patches, including source code, for free before Solaris 10 paying customers.

jlliagre, just looking for clarification -- at http://sunsolve.sun.com/show.do?target=patchpage, I don't see any reference to security patches by themselves, other than the temporary or interim security updates. If I click on the link that says "Patch Cluster & Patch Bundle Downloads", and then click on "Sun Alert Patch Clusters" -- that is then described as "The Sun Alert Patch Clusters provide the minimum amount of change required to obtain all available Solaris OS patches which address Security, Data Corruption, and System Availability issues". When I then try to download the Solaris 10 x86 alert cluster, I still get the message that I have selected premium content requiring a valid contract.

I actually could login and download those, but I'm trying to figure out what the correct answer really is for someone who can't. Where should we point them? Do they have to track and identify individual security issues and identify the individual patches for those? And would they then be able to download those individual patches? That seems rather onerous.

A user without a service plan can go to that page:
http://sunsolve.sun.com/patchfinder/
and select "public patches only" to get a list of patches available for him/her.

OK. So from the main sunsolve page, you can click on the "patch finder advanced search"; or, from the patches and updates page that I was on, click on the "patch finder". This leads to an advanced search tool (link provided also by jlliagre above) whose options make it pretty easy. So, selecting the OS Release and the Architecture, and clicking on the security, recommended, and public only check boxes, brings up a list of the public patches that would be in the recommended and security patch cluster for your OS and architecture. Then you can check off the ones you want or click an option that tosses them all in a basket for downloading. That's not really so bad. I had thought that with the patch finder you would be dealing with patches one at a time and have to know what you were looking for from email security alerts. That's the interface I've dealt with when I had to make sure I had the necessary updates for SAS multipathing, for example.

If I were making recommendations to Sun, I would ask them to put a comment and link in the error page. Then you would get the error saying you didn't have access, but with a message telling you how to find publicly accessible patches and updates and a link to the patch finder advanced search. All of their current commentary on the error page is how to add a contract to your account or sign up for a contract or complain about your lack of access.

Anyway, enough. Problem solved. Thanks to jlliagre.