While I was installing a Portal patch, the server froze and I had to restart the entire server which corrupted the Portal installation. Doing a Portal repair did not work, so I uninstalled Portal which went fine, however a couple Portal patches remained installed in Control Panel. I attempted to uninstall them, but it gave an error "this action is only valid for products that are currently installed."
I reinstalled Portal (a "clean" uninstall by deleing the content and program file directories) and then attempted to uninstall the patches, but this time I received a different error "the patch is not applied to this product."
Furthermore, Esri's patch tool does indicate that the patches are installed, even though I can confirm the patch is not reflected in the Portal installation (because the password reset functionality Esri recently removed in a security patch still existed). I was able to force remove the patches through Windows, but Esri's patch notification tool still indicates that the patch is installed.
Ultimately, reinstalling the patch manually worked, but it's misleading (and potentially dangerous when talking about security patches) when Esri's patch tool indicates that a patch is installed when it really isn't.
So, this leads me to the following couple of questions:
- Is there a way to truly confirm if a patch is installed (outside of Esri's patch notification tool and control panel)? Because in my experience, the patch notification tool is not 100% reliable.
- Where does Esri's patch tool reference installed patches at? Is there a way to "force" the patch tool to not recognize a patch as being installed?
Again, the underlying issue is resolved now and I can confirm the patches are installed (only based on the behavior that the patches fix, such as the password reset functionality), but I'd still like to know the answer to the couple of questions above in case I ever encounter this issue again.
