The /var/sadm/pkg dir was cleaned out by someone looking for space and now the systems will not accept a patch bundle.
Since this is Solaris 10 it is fairly critical to get these boxes to patch to at least kernel 55.

The rest of the Live Upgrade parts are working fine - lucreate, etc..

Any way to force a patch bundle, or an undocumented "ignore" switch ?

Have you reached out to Oracle?
(And I'm curious about what happened to the "someone" who "cleaned out" a system directory...)

"Someone" is long gone, before I got here, for other reasons too. These boxes have not been patched since kernel 17. I tried Live Upgrade from a -26 ISO and the boot failure flashes by too quick to catch, my usual tricks at capturing console output are either failing miserable or I can't find them after a boot from ISO/mini-root/snapshot.
I have no idea where the body is. I pray he is not at your workplace.
We do not have a support contract, hence the hiring of a burnt-out 35 year sysadmin BOFH (me).

There is no way for patchadd to work without a clue about what is assumed to be already installed (packages and patches).

Your options to get the missing directory contents are:

1. restore /var/sadm/pkg from backup (I'm afraid this is not an option in your case)

2. copy /var/sadm/pkg from an existing similarly configured machine (risky)

3. rebuild a /var/sadm/pkg from scratch: install Solaris from an ISO on another machine, install the same patches. (lengthy and risky)
You should be able to retrieve the list of:
- the initial installation in /var/sadm/system/logs/install_log
- installed packages from /var/sadm/install/contents
- installed patches from /var/sadm/patch/* files

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