Canonical Rolls Out Its Own Kernel Livepatching Service For Ubuntu

Canonical has formally moved forward with its enterprise kernel livepatching service, which it's making free to the Ubuntu community -- assuming you have three Ubuntu installations or less. Like the other approaches, this is about applying in real-time critical security fixes to the kernel without rebooting.

Red Hat has been working on Kpatch and SUSE has been working on kGraft for a while but now Canonical is rolling out its own livepatch service for Ubuntu users that makes use of the kernel's Kernel Live Patching technology. Canonical Livepatching is commercially available to every Ubuntu Advantage customer while for the Ubuntu community it's offering it for free on up to three Ubuntu installations.

The livepatching service currently works with Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. Those wishing to learn more can read this mailing list announcement while more technical details can be found in this blog post by Canonical's Dustin Kirkland.