Elivepatch Aims To Make Live Kernel Patching Easier On Gentoo

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Elivepatch Aims To Make Live Kernel Patching Easier On Gentoo

Elivepatch is a new means of live kernel patching of Gentoo Linux and works in a distributed manner...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Elivepatch-Gentoo-Linux

[doublez13]

Why have they chosen to make this so Gentoo specific? It'd be cool if other distro could benefit from a generic framework.

[ermo]

Why have they chosen to make this so Gentoo specific? It'd be cool if other distro could benefit from a generic framework.

From Alice Ferrazzi's personal website:

"Alice Ferrazzi is a Gentoo Linux Developer and the Gentoo Kernel Project Leader, usually working on Gentoo Ebuild, Eclass and Linux Kernel.

She holds Gentoo study meetings in Japan and organizes the Gentoo booth at various open source events."

She saw a way to scratch her Gentoo-specific itch and get paid for it via the GSoC program (doesn't Google use Gentoo to build its Chrome OS?). Good for her.

Also, I don't believe Gentoo is known for necessarily caring what other distributions do (feel free to correct me on this point).

[timofonic]

From Alice Ferrazzi's personal website:

"Alice Ferrazzi is a Gentoo Linux Developer and the Gentoo Kernel Project Leader, usually working on Gentoo Ebuild, Eclass and Linux Kernel.

She holds Gentoo study meetings in Japan and organizes the Gentoo booth at various open source events."

She saw a way to scratch her Gentoo-specific itch and get paid for it via the GSoC program (doesn't Google use Gentoo to build its Chrome OS?). Good for her.

Also, I don't believe Gentoo is known for necessarily caring what other distributions do (feel free to correct me on this point).

Why would they do it?

[puleglot]

Why have they chosen to make this so Gentoo specific? It'd be cool if other distro could benefit from a generic framework.

Because it is not needed for binary distros.

[starshipeleven]

Why have they chosen to make this so Gentoo specific? It'd be cool if other distro could benefit from a generic framework.

Because Gentoo happens to have more need to deal with patching the kernel and compiling it on the user's own system, while most other distros ship pre-compiled packages and any patching happens in the distro's own automated build system, watched by maintainers.

[starshipeleven]

Also, I don't believe Gentoo is known for necessarily caring what other distributions do (feel free to correct me on this point).

This is true for most linux distros too, btw. Not all projects make sense for all distros.

[aliceinwire]

Why have they chosen to make this so Gentoo specific? It'd be cool if other distro could benefit from a generic framework.

Hello,
I'm Alice and elivepatch is a project made by me and Gokturk my advisor/mentor.
Elivepatch as been made Gentoo specific because the project at first as been conceived for Gentoo users base, but we could see interest also outside of Gentoo and we are working for making Gentoo specifics parts modular so that in the future elivepatch will work also on other distributions.
For example, we got also feedback from kpatch creator for using elivepatch for testing kpatch.

[GreatEmerald]

Nice, that can be potentially useful for my server. Compiling a whole kernel and then praying that the reboot works and doesn't bork the system is not a great experience, and this can potentially solve the problem. Though the wiki page doesn't really say much about how the whole process works (and how to run the server and lient on the same machine).

[aliceinwire]

Nice, that can be potentially useful for my server. Compiling a whole kernel and then praying that the reboot works and doesn't bork the system is not a great experience, and this can potentially solve the problem. Though the wiki page doesn't really say much about how the whole process works (and how to run the server and lient on the same machine).

The process is actually simple and is explained here https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Elivepatch#Usage
We are anyway thinking to add some new feature in the future, so the documentation is still missing some information that will be added with the maturity of the project.