When using Linux systems, in this case Ubuntu, there are a series of components that are essential for everything to work as expected. One of the most important is the nucleus or kernel, since it has the task of managing system resources such as memory, processor, hard disk, etc. It runs in privileged mode in order to have full access to system resources and in the case of Linux the kernel is made up of different modules which can be loaded and unloaded dynamically at runtime and thus perform many extra tasks. This is why the kernel must be updated periodically, but this may have a problem and that is that this update process requires a system restart to apply the changes..
To install kernel updates in Linux without rebooting, we will use Livepatch, which has been created as a real-time update technology where it will be possible to update the kernel of the running system without requiring a reboot. Thanks to Livepatch the available patches will be installed with the system in use, avoiding that the current tasks have to be stopped.
Livepatch makes use of advanced kernel update techniques where it will be possible to apply and correct critical security bugs in the kernel and the updates will be applied automatically in the background without us having to intervene as users. Livepatch is a feature available for Ubuntu and SUSE systems..
Livepatch is made up of the client application, the livepatch service which is managed by Canonical and has a local server, the client will run on the computer and will periodically check if there are patches available, if so, it will take care of their download, verification and installation.
In this tutorial we will learn how to install Livepatch to update the Linux kernel without rebooting..
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How to install kernel updates without rebooting
For this we must register in Ubuntu Pro, this account has a paid version and a free version.
Step 1
To do this we will go to the following link:
Ubuntu Professional
Step 2
We click on "Register for personal use" and then we must enter an email and password to create the user:
Step 3
By doing this we will receive an email to activate our account which we will see its use later:
Step 4
Once this process is done, we go to Linux, in this case Ubuntu, and we log in to the website indicated above and in the main window we will see the following:
step 5
There a token associated with the user will be assigned, this token is unique and to have access to it we must log in, now we open the terminal and install the snap manager:
sudo apt install snapd
step 6
Now we install Ubuntu Livepatch with the command:
sudo snap install canonical-livepatch
step 7
We expect each parameter to be downloaded and installed:
step 8
At the end of the process we will see the following:
step 9
Now it's time to install the Ubuntu Pro client and it will be useful to work with Livepatch:
sudo apt install ubuntu-advantage-tools
step 10
We open the Ubuntu Pro website and there we copy our user's token:
step 11
We enable the Livepatch system with the command:
sudo pro attach (token)
step 12
Wait for the process to finish:
step 13
There we will see each component that is installed. In the final part we will see the user and type of subscription:
step 14
We validate the status of Livepatch:
canonical-livepatch status
step 15
We find specific details of the kernel update tasks, for more complete details we execute:
sudo canonical-livepatch status –verbose
step 16
Finally, in case you want to disable Livepatch, we will execute:
sudo snap stop --disable canonical-livepatch
Thanks to this utility it will be possible to keep the kernel of our system updated without having to reboot the system and thus not affect active operations.
