When system updates and upgrades are available, the appliance console (9443) will display a red exclamation mark over the online update or product upgrade icons. Click this icon to view the available update/upgrade packages.
To apply the listed update/upgrade packages click the Update Now button.
When applying updates/upgrades in the common appliance framework (CAF), a status window appears with a scrolling progress bar. This process can take several minutes to complete and will not display anything other than the scrolling progress bar.
To check the status of the update progress, the rpm command can be used from within a VM console or SSH session.
rpm -qa --last
This will show the last rpm packages installed. You will see this list change as the update continues.
Note that the updating of the system is actually performed by zypper. But the system will be unable to aquire a status on the zypper processes because it is locked by the appliance console. By using rpm we can see what rpm packages are being installed.